Kolkata

Nov 16th -ish or somewhere thereabouts..
So this post is a bit old and delinquent. On the same trip to Jamshedpur and Bhubaneswar, I also stopped in Kolkata. Nihal and I went to a new planned area called Salt Lake City which is kind of an IT hub and a new, kind of high-end area. This area, too, was kind of divided up into 'neighborhood units' oriented kind of radially around a central area. The central area had a big mall that seemed pretty popular.
There was also a big park in the center, too, but unfortunately you had to pay to enter.

At this point it was already getting late, so I opted to go see Victoria Memorial. I had hoped to see more of the actual old city, but just didn't end up having enough time. The memorial is this big, white building which is now a museum; the building is inside a big park in the city. What was most interesting to me was how people were using this park.

There was a main walkway terminating at the memorial and on either side were park benches. Each bench was occupied by one, or two at most, couples. Even in the big cities here, I haven't seen much public display of affection, and especially not in more-conservative Ahmedabad. However, at this park there were even a few couples making out, in public! Oh, the brazenness..hahahah. But seriously, PDAs are so rare here that I still do a double take if I see a couple holding hands - and most of the time these couples are married. Also considering the fact that it seems the majority of young indians live with their parents until they marry, and then even after sometimes, they don't have their own place for ..romantic meetings. So the fact that this park has become the place for that is really interesting.

One of the best parts of Kolkata was that I stayed with some friends I had known from CEPT, Saikat and Vibha. Apparently Saikat had liked Vibha right away in school, but she always thought he was just a friend, so they remained good friends during their masters until he finally proposed. They are such a cute couple! Apparently though they are of different castes, Vibha is a higher caste Brahmin, and it took some convincing of her parents to allow the marriage. Now they live with Saikat's parents in Kolkata which has taken some getting used to for Vibha. She comes from central india and so doesn't speak Bengali. She is also veg only, while Saikat and his family, as many Bengalis are, eat non-veg.

But anyway it was great seeing them again after so many years. They showed me the video of their wedding. And I had some nice home-cooked shrimp!

APSA conference and Gandhinagar presentation

CEPT just hosted the biennial Asian Planning Schools Association (APSA) conference from Nov. 24th-26th. Nihal had suggested I present something, so I submitted an abstract about my research thus far on Gandhinagar.

I didn't realize how big of a conference it was going to be; there were a lot of international planners there. CEPT actually extended its semester to allow students to take time off to help with the conference. They set up several big tents in the cricket fields next to CEPT's campus and put down big mats on the ground for the whole event.

For the break-out sessions in the conference, there were several panel themes - sustainability was a big topic, also housing, infrastructure, planning education, and maintaining modern and traditional (which I presented under).

One of the most interesting presentations for me was Tridib Banerjee's keynote; he teaches at University of Southern California. He spoke about politics of space, spoke briefly on gender on space, and on how to define public/private space. His presentation noted some of the interesting uses of space that I have been noticing in India like the many informal, small temples on the road side. He also brought up an interesting point on how public space can become private and vice versa because of technology. People can be in a public plaza but having very private conversations through the internet on their laptops. At the same time, private spaces like your house, can become public when speaking on online forums or doing teleconferencing.

There was also an interesting discussion on a UNESCO presentation. We were questioning how to define what to preserve and whose heritage they were preserving. Is it only the heritage of the upper class and only monuments, and is this relevant? Are they upper class interested in preserving their 'heritage' which happens to be the old city where people are still living, often poorer people and how will the preservation affect them? Should they only be preserving monuments or are there other ways/things to preserve. Is there a way to preserve a living heritage? I brought up the example of Konark Sun temple. It is a UNESCO site, but it is not a living heritage because the temple is no longer used. There are no longer idols in the temple, and it is no longer used for its original purpose. Is there a way to preserve these places and also allow people to still use these spaces more spontaneously rather than just as a museum and to acknowledge that the use of a space can change over time? But by gating them and charging an admission, you omit lower classes being able to use these spaces. So it was a very interesting discussion.

The conference was a really good opportunity to meet a lot of other planners, so I really enjoyed meeting a lot of people. I wasn't so happy with the way my presentation went, however. I was the last presenter in a panel of 5, so we each were supposed to have 15 minutes to present. However a sixth presenter was added at the last minute, and the earlier presenters took up more time than they were supposed to, so I had maybe 10 minutes to present. I presented under the Modern and traditional theme. Most moderators of panels simply helped engage discussion at the end of the presentations. However our moderator decided it was his duty to say which presentations were relevant or not which I don't think was his role at all. Apparently mine was not relevant to the theme... and because I said at the beginning that mine was a work in progress, the moderator thought it wasn't yet worth commenting on. He also chewed out a masters thesis student who presented his work who had unfortunately presented on an area that the moderator was quite familiar with.

But anyway in my presentation, I talked about the similarities and differences between the two cities. Both cities were planned as purely administrative, post independence capital cities and both separated land use functions into zones. The neighborhood unit was the central building block for the plans of both, and both had and 4 level hierarchy of commercial development. Some of the differences are the locations of different land uses in each city; the location of the capital complexes and industrial areas are especially different. Also the size of the neighborhood unit was reduced in Gandhinagar; the large size of the unit had been criticized a lot in Chandigarh. Also the layout of the capital complex - while Ravi Kalia, the author of the main book on Gandhinagar, says its capital complex is a complete failure, I completely disagree. I think it is much more successful than Chandigarh's because it is better incorporated into the city. It is highly visible and all the roads draw vehicles in towards it. The design creates a vista and entry with a wide street separated by a nicely maintained linear park while Chandigarh's capital complex is difficult to locate, is very out-of-the-way, and its famous Corbusier buildings are not even visible from the street. One of the biggest differences is citizens' perceptions of the cities. While people are proud of Chandigarh, people don't want to live in Gandhinagar.

Jamshedpur

Nov. 13-16
I took the train from Kolkatta to Jamshedpur and spent several days in the Ginger Hotel, a really well-run chain owned by Tata. It makes me happy to know that I always know what to expect here. The staff is so friendly, speaks English so well, and efficient. I wanted to go to this city in the state of Jharkhand because it is also a new, planned Indian city, actually Otto Koenigsberger who worked on Bhubaneswar also had a hand in this city. The big difference though between the origins of Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, and Bhubaneswar, and Jamshedpur is that the latter planned privately instead of by the government. Because of the mining there, the Tata company planned the city as a company town, and therefore the city is also known as Tatanagar.

The layout of the town is interesting; it is definitely not reminiscent of Chandigarh or Gandhinagar and definitely feels more 'Indian.' The whole city is kind of developed as a big ring around the enormous Tata Steel plant in the center. There are a number of housing colonies for each of the big companies there, and overall the housing and roads seem well maintained.

There is a big park - Jubilee Park which was given to the city by Tata on its 50th anniversary. It appears to be very well-used with a big lake, a zoo, gardens, and more. You definitely realize what is important in designing a park in India! Although there are elaborate gardens, no one was sitting in these areas. Instead if you looked around, there were people scattered around the park, but they were located only in the shade of a tree. Despite the nice gardens, if there was no shade, the people wouldn't sit there.

There was a really amazing Sunday market in Birsanager. There were so many people there - I couldn't believe it! I traveled around the various neighborhoods in the town. Sakchi was one of the biggest and supposedly nicest. I also went up to Mango to see Dimna Lake, and the Agrico colony.

Hindi Class

Just began my Hindi classes finally at Gujarat Vidyapith, a school actually started by Gandhi ji! Every Tues, Thur, and Fri from 8:30 to 10 I have class. I must say the sitting on the floor is killing me though! The class is for foreigners only, so it's an interesting mix. It seems there are a number of German students there, working for an NGO. I spoke in German with one girl, but I must admit that it was really difficult to speak it while also in the process of learning Hindi! I ended up asking a question in German and then responding to the answer with a Hindi 'thik hai' or 'bahut accha'...There are a couple Americans also working at an NGO, another American whose husband is pursuing a business here, and an Iraqi. It's pretty amusing to hear Hindi spoken with so many accents. I was really confused for awhile when we were saying where we are from in Hindi. The one girl who I thought was from Germany, kept saying she was from Gemini. Until I figured out it was her accent, I thought it was maybe some military base or something!

Meanwhile I think our teacher must have been an aspiring Bollywood singer in her youth! It's really amusing because at least every class she breaks into song. She actually wrote a book on learning Hindi through bollywood songs. It was really amusing the other day because we had a new student named Rosa, short for Rosalin. Our teacher said everyone here would call her Rosa because of a popular movie of the same name, and then proceeded to tell us the whole plot of the movie. Finally she said, but that's ok, I will call you Rosalin. To which the student responded, but what if I like Rosa??

Anyway it's a new fun something to do and to meet new people. And I get a kick out of busting out a new Hindi phrase in front of my Indian friends, and they get a big kick out of it as well - especially when I busted out, 'aap se mil kar bahut khusi hui' - very glad to meet you. I was pretty surprised myself that I remembered it all...!

Bhubaneswar

Nov 9 - 12

I know, it's been awhile since I've posted. Things have been a bit busy, so I'll start with the trip to the east, beginning with Bhubaneswar.

Bhubaneswar was the first of the new Indian capitals before Chandigarh and Gandhinagar and was planned by Otto Koenigsberger, originally from Germany, when Orissa gained independence from Bihar. Like the other two cities, it was also planned around the neighborhood unit. Different from the other cities is the fact that Bhubaneswar was already a town and was not begun from scratch. It had been an important temple town and pilgrimage site for a long time although it was a small town.

The capital complex is quite different than either Chandigarh or Gandhinagar. While Gandhinagar's is quite compact and symmetrically formal and Chandigarh's buildings are spread out with little relationship to each other, Bhubaneswar's is linear and focused along the main Janpath street within it's sector. Gandhinagar's takes up the entire sector square and has a place of prominence in the heart of the city. It was planned to be the terminal of a grand axis along Street 4 and the linear park in the center of the street contributes to the sense that this area is important and makes wayfinding easy and marks the importance quite obviously.

As Bhubaneswar's layout is linear, the layout does not emphasize the capital complex's importance. It is simply another unit along Janpath that one may stumble across rather than being led to it as in Gandhinagar's case. The capital buildings are also set back from the road, surrounded by a gate, and also by trees which obscure the full view. Then Chandigarh's capital, one has to search for because it is located well out of the way of day-to-day life. The buildings are spread out and oriented to provide a view of the mountains, rather than towards the street to be integrated into the city. It is difficult to even find the correct road to take you to the capital buildings.

Along Bidyut Marg and a few other main roads they have actually built separate bike and pedestrian lanes and the spaces haven't been encroached upon by vendors.

Also the neighborhood units are quite different in Bhubaneswar. Each layout is a bit different, and the units don't rely on the inner distributor road as in the other two cities. Many are laid out in an irregular grid. These residential areas are quite horizontal with far fewer apartment towers and many small bungalows each set back from the road and enclosed with a fence. Self-built housing has been built within empty space and integrated into free corners within the other housing units. It seems like this would not be allowed in Chandigarh, and instead self-built housing would be relegated to restricted areas.

The center community spaces of the neighborhood unit in Bhubaneswar are not always located immediately in the center of the unit and often surrounded by a wall. The space is usually used for different levels of schools, and it seems is rarely used for neighborhood commercial. Throughout the units, small informal stands are set up to sell various items, but it seems most commercial is along the edges.

It seems like housing types are not really mixed together by different classes.

The other cities' plans really emphasized open space and the idea of a green belt, whether or not it was implemented, but it seems that open space was not as much planned into Bhubaneswar. Chandigarh has Leisure Valley and Sukhna Lake and Gandhinagar has recreation space to the east near the river and had planned to damn the river to create a lake.

But the city definitely feels more “Indian” than either of the other two. Rickshaws are not a problem to find. While new development is definitely different from the original city and is set back from the road, it is similar to the development along S.G. Highway in Ahmedabad.

Markets

There is a main, formal shopping area on the south side of Unit 2, just bordering the main road, but not open to it. Completely facing the main road in this area are the green tin booths set up for vendors, but in addition to this, the road leading from the main road to the formal shopping area, vendors have also built their own stands. The formal shopping center is linear, going east/west. There is a big pedestrian mall in between the shops, but motorcycles are allowed and parked in the center, so it's rather dangerous for the pedestrians to walk at times. On the north side, the buildings seem to have been formally planned and built; however, on the south side there are many booths and shops that appear to have been self-built. All the development is only a single story. There seems to have been little restriction on signage as there had been in Chandigarh. Most of the shops sell clothing with some jewelry shops and ones selling Orissa silverwork. There are only a couple of restaurants and it seems no places selling groceries.

Across the wide street is a less formal market, that is very dense. Shops are very close together and the paths between them are very narrow. This market seems to sell almost everything – clothes, food, and household goods.

It seems like there is almost no commercial within the residential areas like there are in Chandigarh and Gandhinagar.