european colonial urban design and architecture in indian metropolis.pdf

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

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European colonial urban design and architecture in

Indian metropolis

Term Paper for History of Architecture (AP131)

Garima Bansal

Roll Number: 41

Sushant School of Art and Architecture

ABSTRACT

Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi- four great metropolises of India; have been shaped by

western architecture and urban planning from their creation by the British to the present time.

In this reading, the history of urban planning in India is explored with architecture and planning in

Calcutta throughout 19th to 20th century with ideological controversy over Western architecture as it

focused on the design of New Delhi. Approach of British urban architects and planners and current

urban planning strategies are also discussed.

The dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent was taken in 1773, when the

Company established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings,

and became directly involved in governance.

Towards the close of the nineteenth century, Britain became a centre of innovative thinking of urban

planning:

A proposal for opening up congested districts was made in 1902, with the area of Burra

Bazar given a high priority for renovation.

In 1911, the government created the Calcutta Improvement Trust and empowered it to

undertake schemes for the extension and improvement of the city. Trams and new roads were constructed.

The establishment of the New Delhi in 1912 had coincided with a period of intense interest in city

planning among the British. The principal focas was to make it as monumental complex.

The design was produced on a grand scale by New Delhi Planning committee headed by George

Swinton, architect Sir Edwin Lutyen, Herbert Baker and Geoffrey de Montermorency.




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PAPER

History of Urban Planning

City planning has always been of chief concern since times immemorial. Evidence of planning has been

unearthed in the ruins of cities in China, India, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean world, and South

and Central America. Early examples of efforts towards planned urban development include orderly

street systems that are rectilinear and sometimes radial; division of a city into specialised functional

quarters; development of commanding central sites for palaces, temples and civic buildings; and

advanced systems of fortification, water supply, and drainage. Most of the evidence is in smaller cities

that were built in comparatively short periods as colonies. Often the central cities of ancient states

grew to substantial size before they achieved governments capable of imposing controls.

Urban Planning In India

India has characteristically drifted with history, rising periodically to accomplish great things. In no field

has this been truer than in town planning. From prehistoric Mohenjo Daro, to the imperial capital cities

of British India Calcutta and Delhi, to Corbusier's Chandigarh, India has pioneered in town building.

Figure 1: The gateway and drain at HarappaRef: http://www.sewerhistory.org/images/w/wam/har_wam02.jpg

Pre-colonial Indian civilization had deep roots and imbues all aspects of modern society with its specific

character. There is historical evidence of vibrant urban civilizations in India with town planning

practiced here for millennia.

With colonization, however, indigenously evolved practices of urban planning were abandoned and

replaced instead by European ones. In effect, the dialectical process of resolving local urban issues

within the framework of local material and cultural resources and requirements was replaced by an

unquestioning allegiance to foreign models of planning, a tendency evident even today. The universal

and modern town planning laws are basically British constructions and have not evolved significantly

since independence. The modern practice of urban planning in India was initiated after the War of

1857.




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The planning behind the City of Joy

Kolkata is previously known as Calcutta. The Calcutta had the status of the administrative capital of

British India, and still today, its growth and land uses are highly influenced by the past colonial rule.

Earlier the city was racially segregated into White Town, exclusively built for the British officers, Native

Town for Indians and in between Grey Town which was mainly the residing place of other foreign

communities. But this set up of Calcutta, racial segregation of the city was tried to abolish in the latter

half of the nineteenth century. Then, in 1911, the British Empire established their capital in New Delhi

and the commenced planning for the new capital of Imperial India. Thereby, the urban planning in

both the colonial legacy is different in terms of urban settlement and spatial transformation.

The admirers of „City of Joy' - Kolkata drew many acerbic comments like Gunter Grass's “a bloody

great mass that was dropped by God and called Calcutta”; In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote a book

named as „the city of dreadful nights‟. His response to Calcutta was ostentatiously bigoted and he

realized that renovation of city would have political implications and that Indian and British opinion

might not necessarily be in accord.

The turn of the century was marked by an intensified concern for the sanitary conditions of Calcutta

and an awareness of the need for increase planning control.

Calcutta was thick in the process of development. After the Battle of Plassey with the laying out of

Maidan around Fort William, the British entrenched themselves with the local administration.

Having been elevated from merchants to rulers, their immediate concern was to provide wide roads

for easy movement of their army, establishment of commercial interests wherever possible and

attending to the urgent needs of fire control and prevention of epidemics in their seat of power i.e.

Calcutta.

With these goals in mind, Governor General Lord Wellesley (1798-1805) began the planning process

with his prescriptive „Minute on Calcutta' in 1803 which led to the setting up of the Lottery Committee in

1817 — so called because funds for city development were raised through public lotteries.

A proposal for opening up congested districts was made in 1902, with the area of Burra Bazzar given

a high priority for renovation. In 1911, the government created the Calcutta Improvement trust and

empowered it to undertake schemes for the extension and improvement of the city. Its chairman was an

Indian civil service officer, C.H. Bompas. He observed that there was not a single road extending from

the city centre to the surrounding country. Within the city itself, especially in the congested districts of

North Calcutta, the street system was totally inadequate for the volume of traffic and large areas had

virtually no streets at all.




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Figure 2: Calcutta streets from Richard’s plan, 1914 Ref: The Indian Metropolis, 1989:p.125

Figure Convinced that Calcutta required a comprehensive plan, Bompas invited a British engineer, E.P.Richard to prepare, a detail study of the city‟s need. The report work was begun in 1913 and

published in 1914.

Richard experience of cities had given him no preparation for the street system of Calcutta and he was

particularly struck by the extensive and densely built Indian district served only by tortuous lanes and

passages. The mesh of narrow streets divided the city into half-mile rectangles within which tangle

footpath separate properly set at „every possible angles‟. In Richard‟s view, the Calcutta slums

resulted in parts from the inability of people to commute in and out of the city. Although a small

tramway system existed since 1873, it was hampered in its expansion because of the lack suitable

streets. Elements of his proposed street plan were gradually achieved, and, through demolition, a

number of broad arteries were cut through the dense urban fabric.

Figure 3: Richard‟s ideal plan for Calcutta. (Proposed new streets are shown in red.)Ref: The Indian Metropolis, 1989:p.126




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The British generally praised the achievements of the improvement trust, citing the spacious central

avenue 100 feet wide. Economic forces would have foster many changes, even without the renovations

of the improvement trust. in 1930, nearly all the banks and great business houses have rebuilt their

premises in stylizes which have borrowed largely from the architecture of the great commercial cities

of the west. The palaces chowringhee have mostly disappeared, their sites covered by commercial

buildings, by clubs, or by the great blocks of flats. It was noted that the European no longer lives in a

sort of proud isolation. Rich Indians increasingly invade the European quarter and out do the merchant

insist in the splendour of the dwellings.

Figure 4: Harrison road, constructed in 1893 Figure 5: Central Avenue and Chowringhee Square,1935Ref: The Indian Metropolis, 1989:p.133: fig.123 Ref: The Indian Metropolis, 1989:p.127: fig.116

Calcutta was indeed going through momentous changes under the British rule. New roads and

neighbourhoods were planned, channels for drainage were being dug, new structures were coming up

and existing buildings refurbished. Planning encompassed not only the regulation of physical spaces,

but also the multiple concerns of health, policing and commerce.

Calcutta was typical modern commercial city in piecemeal nature of its planning activity and in the

subordination of ideology to prevailing economic forces. It was only in New Delhi that an opportunity

to plan comprehensively was afforded. The establishment of the new capital in 1912 had coincided

with the period of intense interest in city planning among the British.

Planning of Modern Delhi

At the time New Delhi was created, the principal focus of attention among the designers was the

monumental complex. The creation of the viceroy‟s palace and the accompanying secretariat buildings

reflected an impressive clarity of concept. New Delhi was intended to house the imperial government

headquarters. The only need that was anticipated was for the office space, together with housing and

institutional facilities for staff. New Delhi was laid out on a grand scale and in the grand classical

tradition.




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The design was produced by the New Delhi Planning Committee headed by George Swinton,

chairman of the London Country Council, and it included John Brodie, City Engineer of Liverpool, and

architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker was attached to committee, while H.V. Lanchester

served as a consultant.

Figure 6: Plan of official quarter of New DelhiRef: The Indian Metropolis, 1989:p.148: fig.139

The expansive ordering of New Delhi was generally recognized as symbolizing the far- reaching

powers of British rule. The system of axes and diagonals drawn from the tradition of baroque

classicism provided a means of unifying a large- scale composition and of establishing visual hierarchy.

New Delhi was conceived as a purely British settlement juxtaposed to the Indian city. Old Delhi, with its

intricate web of narrow winding streets and densely packed buildings, and New Delhi, with its

geometric plan and vast spaces, was to remain dramatically different in form, as well as physically

discrete. The Town Planning Committee of New Delhi was convinced that the creation of the new

capital should be accompanied by a innovation of the native city. The logical direction of expansion

appeared to be west of the old city, and land for redevelopment was acquired in the district later

called Karol Bagh.

New Delhi, with its vast dimensions, has been described as the first city specifically designed to the

scale of the motorcar. The British in India had shown a taste for far-flung settlement long before the

intervention of the internal combustion engine. New Delhi consisted primarily of a monumental

government complex surrounded by open space and scattered, low- rise housing. The struggling Indian

society envisioned the capital as a future metropolis.

The initial construction of New Delhi was described as a „Road plan‟ whereas of Calcutta was „town

plan‟. Therefore, the impact of colonial legacy still hovers on the urban planning of Indian cities.




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Work of Sir Patrick Geddes

Sir Patrick Geddes (1854 - 1932) was an innovative thinker in the fields of urban planning and

education. He was responsible for introducing the concept of "region" to architectural planning.

Geddes arrived in Madras in 1914, and within eight moths he had produced twelve studies of towns in

the presidency. He made a second visit to India in 1915-18, focusing primarily on the northern plains

and making a detailed investigation of the town of Indore. Between1920 and 1924, Geddes served a

professor of civics and sociology at the University of Bombay. He had a sympathetic appreciation for

Indian townscape. According to Geddes, British planning in India seemed to be drawn from outmoded

sanitary bylaws, “with their enormous product of mean streets in our industrial towns, not from

contemporary town planning at all.”

Geddes advocated what he called “conservative surgery” with regard to clearance. Instead of driving

straight streets through congested districts, he favoured a careful examination of the existing physical

fabric so that it could be gradually renovated while conserving what was best.

Figure 7: Streets in Georgetown, MadrasRef: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/keeping-track-of-heritage-in-the-changing-world/article3462993.ece

Geddes‟s planning studies focused on the relatively small older towns of the Madras. He was,

nevertheless, responsible for bringing to Madras a British architect, Henry Vaughan Lanchester, who

did a detailed study of the city in 1916 and set up India‟s first city -planning class. Lanchester

suggested that Madras expand by means planned garden cities.

Although some planning survey work was pursued in Madras after Lanchester‟s departure, the

development of the city remained piecemeal.




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Patrick Geddes responded favourably to Burra Bazaar, Calcutta. As to the network of narrow

pedestrian lanes, he believed that this system of circulation was highly useful in getting foot traffic off

the streets and providing short cuts.

Also, when Patrick Geddes resided in Bombay in 1920, he condemned the Bombay City Improvement

Trust chawls as “Bolshevik barracks”.

Chawls are the basic multi-storey dwelling type. Because of the shortage of space, inhabitants of these

housing celebrate the intimate and supportive social life engendered by shared balconies and

courtyards.

Figure 8: Bombay chawl courtyardRef: http://www.tehelka.com/mumbai-chawls-set-to-become-real-estate-gold-mine-the-builder-lobby-is-ecstatic-3/

Present day complexity of Indian Urbanism

In urban planning terms, in India, not one, but several disparate circumstances need to be

reconciled simultaneously: neat suburban developments with homogenous populations and the

persistence of the heterogeneous „chaotic‟ traditional settlements; the city of the „haves‟ and the

city of the „have-nots‟; Lutyens‟ city ; the automobile and the bicycle and so on. With few

models available anywhere to help conceptualize such heterogeneity, so town planners in India

will have to become increasingly self-referential. Notwithstanding the problems and pitfalls

inherent in capturing this changing perspective, there are promising avenues that can be

fruitfully explored.

To institutionalize the „modern‟ process of planning, the Public Works Department published

The Handbook on Town Planning in 1876. The Handbook contained guidelines for undertaking

urban development projects all over the country and it is easy to trace the origins of many

current professional philosophies and practices to this book. These guidelines were formulated

at a time when the British had begun systematic efforts to ensure civic health and hygiene in

their own cities at home, so they merely transferred the models they had developed for those

cities to the colonies.




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One such area of enquiry lies in the field of propounding of the „India Shining‟ brand of urban

development. Enthusiastic urban planners strenuously contest aesthetics of „both-and‟

environments. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), underpins

radical „both-and‟ aesthetic and aims to put into practice the principles enunciated in the 73rd

and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India that mandate a radically different,

decentralized planning and development process.

Bibliography

1. Norma Evenson. The Indian Metropolis: A View Towards the West. Hong Kong : South Sea In't Press

Ltd., 1989. ISBN 0-300-04333-3.

2. V. B. Ganesan.The planning behind the City of Joy, may7,2012. The Hindu.

3 . A . G . Krishna Menon. The complexity of Indian urbanism,2007. the India Seminar

4. Sahay Shrey. Urban Planning in India,2003. Vereniging Van Bouwkunst

5. Mala Mukherjee. Urban Growth and Spatial Transformation Of Kolkata Metropolis: A ContinuationOf Colonial Legacy, march 2013. Volume3, Issue 3, IJRMEC . ISSN: 2250-057X .

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