Chandigarh - Question of Cities

‘Aesthetics not an after-thought or beautification, it’s harmony of city spaces and the environment’

Cities become beautiful not only because of the quality of architecture but how it intermingles with nature, other life forms, and visual expressions of different communities. Advanced engineering and technology seen in flyovers, underpasses, and skyscrapers do not regard the…

‘Ecology and landform give rise to urban form. Town planning flattens it to 2-dimension’

Cities have been turned into a mechanical mode of counting numbers with excel sheets, looking at which plot of land can be sold for what kind of profits. Urban design necessarily responds to landform; without landform, there is no urban…

The city and its discontents: Chandigarh’s alternative story

Despite its proclaimed democratic and egalitarian foundation, Chandigarh has emerged as a city designed for neo-liberal India with its grid hierarchy, segregation of functions, and wide tree-lined avenues attracting capital and property-owning class – but excluding labour. The city’s sector-based…

Chalo Chalein: Learning from the urban ecology of Chandigarh

The planned and designed city is known for its abundant green spaces including parks spread across its many sectors, the greenbelt surrounding the city, the valley that runs through it, and lakes. However, Chandigarh is more than the sum of…