Unit 2 Concepts from Planning and Design of Cities

- GandhiNagar
- Bhubaneshwar
- Chandigarh

Urban Design 2015 Compiled from sources / Literary Reading and presentation

It is one of the most recently planned Indian cities. It is lying fifteen miles north of
Ahmedabad on the right bank of Sabarmati River and is a new capital of Gujarat State.
Its planning is based on the pattern of Le Corbusiars Chandigarh. The main objective
behind its establishment was to relieve the overcrowding and polarization of the old city.
Its total area of 21 sq miles is divided into 30 sectors, each one of 1 x 3/4 km rectangle.
It is flanked by light manufacturing industries besides residential areas and public
institutions. Gandhinagar is being planned in a manner to keep it off from all types of
pollution. It has for miles together rows of trees on both sides of the main road which
provide beauty, health and convenience to the residents. An area between sectors 7 to 9
and the river bank is being developed as recreational ground, where a lake is providing
it a scenic sight (Figure 19.1).
Gandhinagar Plan

GANDHI NAGAR

Each of the sectors of Gandhinagar is independent where school, local shopping centre,
hospital, etc., provide basic amenities to consumers of all levels. Highways and roads are
joined by sub-ways to keep the residential houses safe from vehicular traffic. Schoolchildren and tiny-tots have play field near their residences and they are within their
walking distances. They need not to cross vehicular-roads for making use of their
schools, playfield and a shop.

Creating the new city was given to Indian architects H. K. Mewada and
Prakash M. Apte, both of whom had worked as apprentices
during the construction of Chandigarh. The new city was constructed according
to their plan and was named Gandhinagar after Mahatma Gandhi. Upon completion
of the new city, the administrative capital of Gujarat was shifted from Ahmedabad
to Gandhinagar.
Gandhinagar is spread along the banks of the Sabarmati River, with the main city
designed on the west bank of the river on approximately 42.9 km of land. Since it
follows the river's path, the site is gently sloping, from north-east to south-west.
Fine landscape lies along the west bank of the river, which gives the city a
majestic appearance.

GANDHI NAGAR

Gandhinagar is the only new capital of a state in India that was designed
and planned by Indian town planners in service with the State Government.
Since it is relatively new, it is also considered the "greenest" town in the world.
Gandhinagar comprises thirty sectors, and it is a highly structured city with a
well ordered street grid comprising blocks that are divided by two types of streets,
similar to U.S. avenues and streets. Gandhinagar has "letter roads"
(K, KH, G, GH, CH, CHH, and JA) and "number roads" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7).
The letter roads run parallel across the city perpendicular to the number roads,
and both of the road types intersect each other to form a grid, with each block or
square in the grid given a sector number. Each intersection is marked by signal
names such as CH1, CH2, CH3 or JA1, JA2. This provides a high degree of
organization and evenness to the various parts of the city.

Being planned as the administrative capital of the state, current and future population
employed in state government offices was distributed in 30 residential sectors around the
State Assembly-Secretariat complex. In each residential sector some 50 per cent of the
working population would be government-employed. Plots on the periphery of each sector
were designated for private and supporting population and made up the other 50 per cent.
The city was planned for a population of 150,000 but can accommodate double that figure
with increases in the floor space ratio from one to two in the areas reserved for private
development in all residential sectors. The river being the border on the east, and the
industrial area to the north, the most logical future physical expansion of the city was
envisaged towards the north-west. To retain the identity of the city as a new town and
capital, the planners had provided for its growth away from the city of Ahmedabad, which
is to the south. Hence as a rational extension of the grid to the north-west the original
planners had envisaged 30 additional residential sectors that could accommodate a
population of 450,000.

GANDHI NAGAR

GANDHI NAGAR

Unlike Chandigarh, designed on barren lands with no sizeable existing human settlement
nearby, the site of Gandhinagar is just 23km north of the flourishing city of Ahmedabad. In
order to establish and maintain a separate identity for the new city, a surrounding area
consisting of about 39 villages was brought under a Periphery Control Act (as in
Chandigarh) that permitted new development of farm houses only. The area later
constituted a separate administrative district of Gandhinagar.
The city is planned on the western bank of the river. Owing to constant military
confrontation with Pakistan, whose borders are close to the city, a large military presence
was required. The land acquired on the eastern bank, adjacent to national highway no.8,
was therefore allotted to the border security force and a military cantonment. Considering
the mostly south-west to north-east wind direction, the land to the north of the city was
allotted for the then biggest thermal power station and the adjacent areas were zoned for
industrial use. This area was distanced from the township by a 2,000ft wide green strip of
thick vegetation.

GANDHI NAGAR

GANDHI NAGAR

BHUBANESHWAR

BHUBANESHWAR

BHUBANESHWAR

BHUBANESHWAR

BHUBANESHWAR

The commission would be given to American

architects Matthew Nowicki, and Albert Mayer,
who produced a picturesque fanshaped proposal, borrowing ideas from the
Ebenezer Howard's Garden City.
However. Nowicki tragically perished in a plane
crash and, following Mayer's resignation, the
task fell to the hands of the famous Swiss
architect Le Corbusier.

The project team: Le Corbusier, Jeanerette, Fry and Drew. Photo

Courtesy of Chandigarh, The City Beautiful

CHANDIGARH

Mayer first urban plan, Museum of the City of

Chandigarh.
For his part, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le
Corbusier, 1887-1965), was opposed to
the Howard's concept of Garden City and sharply
criticized the concept of the American suburb, which
he called "the organized slavery of capitalist society,
that leads to isolated individualism and to the
destruction of the collective spirit. "
His ideas about urbanism have been equally
influential, mainly based on the decongestion and
densification of urban centers, providing fast
vehicular routes and increasing green areas, and they
were mainly discussed at the International
Congress of Modern Architecture, CIAM.
However, Le Corbusier had not had a chance to
implement them.

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

The plan, conceived for a city of 500,000, is based on a rectangular grid adapted
to field conditions. The basic unit was the "Sector", conceived as self-sufficient and introverted,
subdivided into neighborhood units of about 150 families.
These sectors were linked by a network of streets called "the 7Vs". The "Vs" are pathways hierarchically
organized according to the intensity of the traffic flow that they support.
Thus, V1 are national roads; V2 conduce to the special facilities; V3 are high speed avenues that cross t
he city leading to the local equipment V4, V5 are neighborhood ways, the V6, domestic paths, the
V7 are pedestrian paths and the V8, subsequently added, are bikeways
(Le Corbusier joked: "the 7Vs that are actually 8").
Each 1200 * 800 meters sector is linked to a V2 or V3 high-speed way.
It is crossed from east to west by a V4 shopping street, which connects to other adjacent sectors,
and to a V5 neighborhood way from north to south. V7 walkways connect to the fringes of parks
and green areas.
CONCEPT
Based on 4 main functions (living, working, moving and keeping a healthy body and spirit),
the Corbusian proposal makes an analogy between Chandigarh and the human body:
the head is the Capitol (Sector 1), the heart the Central Area (Sector 17), the lungs were the Leisure Valley,
parks and green areas, the brain, the universities and schools, the circulatory system were 7Vs ways
and the digestive system, the industry.

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

CHANDIGARH

In the 1930s, Le Corbusier expanded and reformulated his ideas on urbanism, eventually
publishing them in La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City) of 1935. Within the radiant city,
there are government buildings, business center, railroad station and air terminal, hotels,
housing, factories, warehouses, and heavy industries. The city center is residential zone,
with business center and insutrial section on either side. By doing so, the internal travel
can be diminished by half. Each housing units is intended for 2700 residents. Each of
these units can provided with its individual set of services, directly connected with
family life: communal services (catering and household supplies), nursery, kindergarten,
open-air playground in the park, primary school in the park. Between the ages of 1 and
14, children will have all necessary educational establishments outside their own front
door, in the park.
Comments:
Le Corbusier opposed the city authorities proposal of making suburban garden-cities
(150-300 people to the hectare). He believed the city should pile the city in on top of
itself and increase its population density to 1,000. By eliminating the suburbs, and
banning those garden-cities with their mock nature, there would be no transportation
crisis. The idea of building radiant city is to build a green city with nature brought inside
the walls of Paris. The entire ground surface will give back to pedestrians. Since the
apartment houses are all up in the air, raised on pilotis, it will be possible to walk across
the city in any direction. In other words: no pedestrian will ever meet an automobile

RADIANT CITY

RADIANT CITY

Le Corbusiers proposal for a modern city of

three million inhabitants, with no fi xed
location, 1922. (FLC)

Speed lies on this side of mere dreams: it is a brutal necessity.

The conquest of speed has always been the dream of mankind, yet it has only taken shape in the last one
hundred years. Before then the stages in the conquest of speed were incredibly distant one from the other. For
an immense period of time, man could only move at the rate at which his own limbs would take him, and all
his progress, apart from sails, consisted in using the speed of animals.
1 This is how in 1924, while discussing ideal
metropolises in the pages of his book City of Tomorrow and Its
Planning, Le Corbusier proclaimed his unconditional faith in the
speed of automobiles.

City of tomorrow