NESTED COHABITATION: THE MODERN CITY & URBAN VILLAGES Mayank Ojha E-mail: mayank.ojha@gmail .com
Fig. 1 Aerial view of village Kumbra in Sector 68, Mohali INTRODUCTION The city form is an expression of culture in the dimension of time and space. The structuring of the city should be rooted in the cultural society and refer to a concept that take attention for technical, aesthetics, and socio-cultural aspects simultaneously. 1 This would hold true, to a large extent, for the traditionally grown cities up to a certain size. Modern urban planning in India did not evolve over such traditional design practices and was fundamentally introduced by the British during the colonial rule. Once a central planning authority (such as the municipal corporation) is formed, which takes up the responsibility of controlling the growth and expansion of urban areas, through planning and policy making, the traces of society, culture and even the market forces asserting a direct impact over urban form and pattern descend as secondary factors. The development of Chandigarh post-independence set the rational planning method, also known as comprehensive planning or master planning2, as a paradigm for future urban developments, as intended by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru himself. There have been numerous debates and discussions over the garden city movement, master planning approach, and consequently, over the Chandigarh experiment. Locally, these have mainly focussed on the planned part of the city, while since the last two decades or so, the focus has shifted to the peripheral slum developments, or the neighbouring townships of Panchkula & Mohali etc. Yet, the rural, agrarian settlements of the region existing prior to any urban development, which formed a blind spot in the thinking of the city’s planners, continue to face the apathy as they lack a holistic developmental path or a long term vision. Although the modernist planning paradigm is accredited for the initiation of the urbanisation process of these villages as well as the birth of new urban conditions, it is critiqued for its selective and exclusive approach and is adverse to the growth and expansion of the villages following a natural trajectory. Thus, this paper is
an attempt to provoke the academia, the administration and the town planning/urban development authorities to duly recognise the home-grown phenomena and critically assess the planning paradigm which ignores the potentials of a symbiotic cohabitation of these urbanised villages with the new planned parts for the city as a whole. Simultaneously using the example of village Burail in Chandigarh, the inception, evolution and the role played by such village settlements in a modern city is explored for some insight on the urbanisation process. URBAN PLANNING PARADIGMS The urban planning horizon of India, a legacy of the colonial rule 3, which itself was based on the ideological principles then prevalent in England, was inherited with little changes by various state administrations and municipal corporations. Successively, the advent of the modernists during the first decade of independent India, again influenced by the garden city movements and the principles of CIAM, affirmatively defined the model for urban planning and design. As evident from the planning for new cities such as Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Jamshedpur, Gandhinagar and expansions for various other metropolitan cities, the rationalist planning approach by a central planning authority, using the land acquisition mechanism4 as a tool was the obvious choice. This was a consequence of various factors and constraints. Firstly, the internationally accepted modernist ideology wherein utopias were sought eschewing traditional forms of architectural practices and urban designs, became an aspired source for the planners faced with the dilemma of either having to continue the colonisers’ vocabulary, or to revert to pre-colonial, traditional practices. While the former would have had to face negative sentiments, the latter could not meet the needs of the time without sufficient research, improvisation and investment. Secondly, the establishment of various public sector organisations such as CPWD, Town & Country Planning Organisation, Housing and Urban Development Corporation, National Building Organisation and various State Housing Boards and Urban Development Authorities, which functioned to plan, build, research and mediate urban developments at all levels, on one hand, filled in for the lack of experienced practitioners and on the other, complied with the strongly advocated Nehruvian socialist mandate. As a result of these dynamics, the master plan for the first phase of Chandigarh’s development necessitated the erasure of many amongst the 59 villages present within the selected site, and the native populations displaced after receiving compensation. However, the subsequent phases of the city’s development and also the creation of master plans for the neighbouring towns of Mohali and Panchkula were improvised versions of the prototypes. Following the pressure from Pind Bachao (save the village) Committee, and influence of vote bank politics, the planners came up with an escapist solution for a mere physical inclusion of the villages within the neighbourhood blocks. This is done by, firstly redefining the village limits, the land beyond which is acquired by the land acquisition mechanism5 and compensation is paid to the owners. At the new boundary, a circulatory road, phirni is constructed up to which the village can expand. The acquired land is then planned in accordance with the master plan. Thus, with the master plans aiming at modernist utopias, and the ground realities presenting a different picture, the inadvertent juxtaposition of sections of the city with villages of contrasting urbanities gave rise to an urban agglomeration consisting of unforeseen criticalities, the potentials of which are discussed later. URBAN VILLAGES Although, no two villages engulfed within the urban fabric would share the same social structure or the physical environment, a broad categorisation is possible on assessing the relations between them and the means of sustenance and typical roles played in the urban setup. Here, using a case study of village Burail6, located in Sector 45, Chandigarh, such a structure is demonstrated by studying the typical patterns of commencement of the urbanisation process of the village and its evolution thereafter. The villages in this region, prior to the establishment of the city of Chandigarh, formed a constellation of agrarian settlements between expanses of agricultural land. In order to restrict the expansion of the villages displacing agricultural lands, the prevalent norms since imperial times, defined a lal dora (literally a Red Line) as the boundary of the village. This usually coincided with a phirni (a circulatory road). Within the lal dora, the land was earmarked as either abadi deh7, i.e. privately owned parcels of land where residential/commercial establishments can be constructed, or as shamlat deh, which was collectively owned land for community activities. This maintained a balance of open/contained as well as private/community spaces.
Burail – Forced inclusion… Burail finds its roots around the 17th century when a Mughal governor constructed a Fort as a defence outpost over a raised mound, and the village developed around it. Prior to Chandigarh’s development, it lied on the old Ropar road which cut across the to-be-laid corbusian sectoral grid. For the first phase of Chandigarh’s development, Burail was a peripheral village, a couple of kilometres away. During the development of the second phase of Chandigarh, it successfully resisted acquisition and displacement and hence only its farm lands were acquired, while the lal dora was revised to the present circulatory road around Burail. Although the urbanisation of Burail had started parallel to the development of the first phase of the city, rapid growth and transformation of the physical environment was witnessed only after the 1980’s, as the village acted as a low cost dormitory for the migrant labour primarily involved in the city’s construction.
Fig. 2 a. Network of agrarian villages, b. Overlay of the sectoral grid, c. 'Fringe' condition From village to a census town… The characteristic evolutionary process common to various urban villages not only in the region, but in most developing nations where large scale urbanisation is taking place, has been echoed here too.
Soon after earmarking the boundary of the ‘protected’ village and with the city around it growing, the settlement becomes a counter magnet to the city for a workforce constituting of migrants and labourers as it offers reasonable infrastructure, daily necessities and suitable living conditions, as compared to labour colonies and slums at the periphery. The villagers (the original farmers) seize the economic opportunity, and with their primary occupation non-existent, turn into land-owners, landlords and entrepreneurs by constructing tenements for the floating workforce within the village fabric. Commercial, economic activities within the village witness a boom and attract people to open shops for retail and services for the village population as well as for those living in the adjoining parts of the planned city. This embarks a physical, sociological and economic transformation process and the entire structuring of the village is shaken as it swells to its limits accompanied by vertical growth, embedding streets and leftover spaces.
PARASITIC URBANISM…? As a result of this trajectory of growth, Burail had a population density of 778 persons/hectare compared to an average of 79 persons/hectare for Chandigarh 8. Apart from being a home to a large number of labourers and migrant workers, the village acts as a repository for many trades and activities that are excluded from the city owing to high land prices, or the stringent byelaws pertaining to commercial containers. Thus, Burail specialises in the trade of building materials, hardware, etc. including allied services, workshops and godowns. Sections of the interface, the ‘fringe belt’ of the village, entirely comprise of motor markets. Many of the city’s trades have their jobs such as tailoring boutiques, printing, etc. outsourced to the village where commercial space is available at relatively lower prices. Furthermore, owing to the proximity of the village to the new bus terminus, there are upto 30 small and large guesthouses and bread & breakfast hotels operating within the village limits. Most of these activities occur at the interface, which mediates between the planned city and the existing village. It is at this interface, the ‘fringe’ of the village which was inadvertently born out of the planner’s bid to avoid negotiation with the existing settlement that a unique urban condition has emerged. Since these
developments are unforeseen, haphazard and individualistic, many challenges are posed at present which invite criticism at large as well as a mount a major burden upon the administration. 9 Challenges10
The intensity of activity and its spillage onto circulation and access paths restricts the accessibility thereby limiting the proliferation of commercial/economic activities to the exterior face of the interface, thus making village core inaccessible to vehicular traffic. As a large number of migrant workers and labourers dwell within the village limits, mostly male labourers (the sex ratio for Burail was at 586 females per 1000 males) 11, the village acquires slum like characteristics and social-backwardness with various anti-social activities taking place, also disrupting the social setup and demographic balance of the village. The ‘fringe’ also casts a division in the social fabric of the city. This is due to the following reasons: 1. The few remaining native inhabitants of the village have strong socio-cultural ties amongst themselves compared to the cosmopolitan nature of the city residents 2. the physically inaccessible interface especially for the city residents dependent upon vehicular traffic, limits interaction amongst the communities 3. the physical boundary of the village coincides with the economic boundaries, i.e. the average incomes of people inhabiting the village are relatively lower than those living adjacent but across the fringe in the planned part of the city Owing to the rapid growth of the fringe area, the development is haphazard, lacking spatial quality and flawed circulation patterns. In the absence of land management mechanisms existing in the village interior or the stringent zoning of the city, any remaining open spaces succumb to commercial pressures and are either used for storage, spillage of activities or are encroached by hawkers and vendors. The fringe area neither inherits the traditional qualities of the village in terms of planning, architectural/spatial character, nor the organized and ordered character of the modernist city. Most of the buildings have an incoherent, ad-hoc outlook aimed to achieve economic efficiency or stand out amongst its neighbours.
Presently, the popular perception of the villages in the city is as its urban backyards. While a homogeneous, rationally planned fabric of contemporary cities is critiqued for various reasons, the induced, unintended heterogeneity is undervalued. However, it is the capacities of a citywide nested cohabitation and their constituent ‘fringe’ conditions that incite an introspection of the same. SYMBIOTIC, NESTED COHABITATION
A large variety of low to mid-end goods and basic services are made available at reduced prices and in proximity, owing to low rentals, negligible transportation costs, compressed supply chain and a minimized catchment area. This implies a reduced footprint of the city, with a network of villages, each acting as a service core for a different part of the city. Alternative sources of income and economic opportunities for the native villager population are generated along with employment for the migrant workforce, minimizing commute across to business & industrial zones in the city. The survival and sustenance of small-scale cottage industries with an increased demand and a farreaching market, owing to integration with the city’s transportation networks. A reduced burden on the administration to provide for housing, infrastructure, amenities and employment to the migrant workforce that is assimilated within the developing interface and thereby considerably reducing the development of peripheral slum outgrowths. A prospective scope for tourism interests on account of the historic landmarks, exploration of the rural characteristics and traditional environment.
While the potential conditions emanating from individual villages may be unique to each, the urban village and the nested cohabitation phenomena is omnipresent and universal. The state of Delhi alone consisted of 135 urbanised villages12 by 2007, and many more at the peripheral areas on the brink. Parallels can be drawn with the ‘Village in City’ phenomena in Shenzhen, China 13 and the Urban Kampungs14 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Thus, given the two dominant mechanisms of controlling and planning for the expansion of cities at their peripheries used by the governments and Urban Development Authorities - Land Acquisition and Land Pooling and Readjustment, along with the pace at which urbanisation 15 is taking place, the interaction of new planned development with the existing developments shall continue to take place. Also, as is critically
evident of the current approach, the physical cordoning off of the village does not restrict the socio-economic exchanges between the two forms of urbanism. CONCLUSION Urban Development Authorities, mainly following the Land Acquisition Act of 1984 and then postliberalisation, with real estate markets growing around Tier I and Tier II cities, have shifted away from the garden city, neighbourhood blocks paradigm, with a stringent state control. As evident from the master plan of Gurgaon, the layout plan promotes private sector companies, such as DLF, Unitech etc. to develop individual chunks of land, thus ‘creating privately administered cities within cities’ 16. Even the recent master plan for Mohali prepared by GMADA, a township intended to continue the sectoral grid of Chandigarh based on the same edicts as laid down by Le Corbusier, embodies deviations from the original intentions. However, this shift is witnessed in a manner contrary to the need of an inclusive approach, as the existing villages are continued to be treated in the same way as before, rather a degree more apart instead of being integrated within the fabric. The number of urban entities within a city has thus increased and a greater number of boundaries need to be traversed.
Fig. 3 Proposed GMADA master plan for Mohali, showing land retained by PUDA, sold to private developers and the existing village settlements So, while modernism has played its part in providing an impetus to urbanisation in India, a post-modernist realisation in a sense parallel to the western movements such as New Urbanism17 is yet to take place. Future urban developments, new as well as expansions for the old should acknowledge the urbanisation of such villages as an inevitable outcome and catalyse the growth in promoting a symbiotic relationship with the planned parts, physically, socially and on economic grounds. Such an ideological shift requires pragmatic thinking and reciprocal stimuli between the academia, the government departments and private practitioners, but more importantly, a realisation of what is available at hand is valuable and potential for the good of citizens in the long run.
References 1
Arifuddin, Endang Titi Sunarti B. Darjosanjot 2011, ‘Implications of socio-cultural values in the city form with special reference to Bugis society, Indonesia’, International journal of academic research, Vol. 3. No. 2. March, 2011, Part IV, Pg 1 2 Mahadevia, Darshini & Joshi, Rutul 2009, ‘Subversive Urban Development in India – Implications on Planning Education’, Working paper 1, Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University, Ahmedabad – Pg 3 3 Oijevaar, K.J. 2008, ‘BANGOCO – A BANGALOREAN COMMUNITY Finding a solution for the small scale slum’, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands – Pg 58 4 Ballaney, Shirley 2009, ‘Town Planning Mechanism in Gujarat, India’, World Bank Institute – Pg 3 5 In a few states of the Indian republic, the Land Pooling Mechanism (Ibid.) is used. 6 The base research work for an appraisal of the physical, socio-cultural documentation of the village was carried out as part of the B-Arch thesis project – ‘Symbiotic Cohabitation’ by the author, at Chandigarh College of Architecture from Jan-May 2011 7 Definitions as per the Punjab Land Revenue Act, XVII of 1887 & The Punjab Village Common Lands Regulation, Act XVIII, 1961 8 Computed from DHCB for Chandigarh (UT) 2001 Census 9 The Building Branch of the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh was established for the sole aim of planning and development for the urbanised villages falling under its jurisdiction. http://mcchandigarh.gov.in/buildingdept.htm 10 Compiled from the author’s thesis on Burail village and the approved reports for the development of various villages by the Municipal Corporation Chandigarh. 11 Computed from DHCB for Chandigarh (UT) 2001 Census 12 Srivastav, P. P. 2007, Report of the Expert Committee on Lal Dora, New Delhi 13 Uehara, Yushi 2004, ‘Casting village within city’, Sarai Reader 2006 : Turbulence, The Sarai Programme, CSDS Delhi 14 Harjoko, Triatno Yudo 2009, ‘Urban Kampung: Its Genesis and Transformation into Metropolis’, VDM Verlag Dr. Müller 15 Datta, Pranati 2006, ‘Urbanisation in India’, Population Studies Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata 16 Schindler, Seth 2007, ‘A 21st Century Urban Landscape: The Emergence of New Socio-Spatial Formations in Gurgaon’, Sarai Reader 2007, The Sarai Programme, CSDS Delhi – Pg 500 17 See ‘Congress for The New Urbanism’, www.cnu.org