Crisis of The Field.

Continuing on posting from almost two decade old articles!!

CRISIS OF THE FIELD- The Residential Urban pattern within in the contemporary city form.

“ In the corbusian city it is only Housing that can legitimately act as the background to representational buildings’

- Alan Colquhon. Le Corbusier & the paradox of reason.

“ In trying to imagine an appropriate Urban form for the post colonial India, Le Corbusier found himself caught between the megalopolitan thesis of his three human establishments & the rather rigid principals of the Athens charter. The last insists, as you know, on the division of a modern city into separate zones for work, dwelling& recreation, while relying upon the transport infrastructure as the sole agent that was capable of uniting these zones into a workable & perceivable whole”.

- Kenneth Frampton. Inaugural address, Chandigarh celebrates 50 years.

Chandigarh, as the resulting prototype of the modern city, & the physical model of subsequent urban development in India, completed the process of the disjointment of the various city activities, resulting into their zones. The residential within the ensuing urban form assumed the role of the Field- a role natural to the scale & size of its activity, & for the same reason the commercial, institutional & recreational became the Object, qualifying the Field.

- Bedroom cities

A Field characterised  by single activity type, resulting into a handful Building types- the exigencies of the demand & growth in this zone vastly outpacing the possibilities of new building types, resulted in repetition & duplication. This in turn characterised it with, besides monotony, lack of other qualifiers to a ‘ Good City Form ‘- paths, edges, landmarks, nodes etc.,.

Insertion of other activity types has been attempted in these zones ( e.g., mixed land use), but the zonal level principals carried directly to area developments have created mini zones within the overall zone- failing to influence the surrounding form.

It is the Grain of the zone that requires re- addressing by a process of inducing other activity types within, developing structuring principals of the zone & its parts and by devising growth principals that would continually re- vitalise the parts.

Wihen the existing planning process that quantifies the activity within areas, it is to be a process of re- mixing activities, structuring city parts apprehending transformations and devising Urban controls- all about the ensuing Building Type.

- The city part

“ because of his fixation on the Athens charter, corbusier & his colleagues arrived at a sector ( 800 x 1200 m) that comprised the neighbourhood units, surrounded on all sides by the V3 road system “- defining the city part derived out of a road infrastructure. A city part far away from the physical size based ‘ quartis’ of Paris, or the socially derived parts of Jaipur- a resultant of the planning ideas of the early century that defined on a statistical derivations of physical distances from sociological requirements like schools, shopping & parks.

The derived city part ( sector) has unquestionably been inappropriate, especially in the socio- economic context of India. But it has continued in the planning process as a unit of city formation.

Even without its cultural moorings, the Chandigarh city part attempted the resolution of the problem of the automobile invasion within the physical environment of f the neighbourhood- a task continually becoming difficult to tackle in future developments& in most cases, given up on, save symbolic references.

Upon this process has been recent invasions of non- physical dimensions- security & insufficient infrastructure. Together a new type in City part seems to be manifesting- one defined by its physical size for self defence& maintainability, often reacting to the automobile by rejecting it & characterised by restraining its physical ( and thereby Social, civic & architectural) integration with the othercity parts ( e.g. Asiad village housing, press enclave, defensive formations in lajpat nagar), all together resulting in a fractured city pattern.

While accepting City Part as a unit of the perceivable structure of the city form, the socially, occupationally or demographically derived City parts of the pre modern planning era are out of consideration In contemporary urbanism. Yet, we have available various Forms-  trasmutated from the physically defined & sociologically derived city part of Chandigarh-  the Sector.

With reference to case example ‘ Master plan Delhi & the resulting city form’- there exist city parts that are statistically derived & administratively defined( e.g., Greater Kailash, vasant Kunj, Dwarka, Sarita vihar etc.), that are distinguishable by scale & building typology. Though there exists a planning process ( zonal plans) That attempts to derive sub-units of this part, it fails(in mots cases) to result them as perceivable parts( e.g., pockets, societies, colonies etc.,). The available planning processes stop at the level of this scale. Thence, the non- planned social processes, addressing the issues of security & infrastructure needs modify their physical sizes & definitions , attributing them qualifications of being parts. The city form becomes a additive result of these parts, with the transport system uniting  them!

While no consistent physical dimensions of this part are available, it is characterised by its restraint to physical integration & similarity in response to the issues of the Automobile, Security & insufficiency of infrastructure - issues that are pertinent!!

The scale, structuring & relationships of this city part requires review, to be able to answer the pertinent issues, while creating a continual city pattern that is ‘ workable & perceivable.

The existing planning process will than be reviewed for ‘ another level of” plans that start attention from a smaller scale of city part.