Urban India

Cities are spatial organisations that have evolved over the course of centuries and respond to the particular landscape and climate, but also to cultural factors. Consequently, cities and villages will have a different outlook in the various regions around the world. Recently, however, due to the rapid growth of cities worldwide, a globalisation process has led to uniform looking cities, that do not relate to the traditional urban patterns that have evolved over time. Furthermore, most of these new developments are neither environmentally friendly nor do they contribute to the resilience of cities—both requirements by most countries worldwide to generate socially sustainable cities or to counteract climate change. However, it is hardly investigated which attributes and qualities an urban environment of a particular region has. By taking the example of India this book aims to identify spacial elements of India’s cities that have evolved over the millennia and have led to a built heritage that is distinctive, unique, and local to India and nowhere else. However, India has a long history, where cities have continuously evolved and were adapted to the needs of the society. Such a long period and such a vast region is difficult to depict in one book. Therefore, nine urban scenarios, the episodes, have been singled out that still influence Indian cities until today. In this chapter, the underlying principles of spatial organisation are discussed to lead the way for India’s special urban and village development. This chapter provides an abstract of the underlying theories of space as a social entity.

In this chapter, some insights into India are provided for all readers who are not so familiar with the culture and history of the subcontinent. The chapter starts with some general facts about landscape and climate. Then, a short narrative of India's history is provided, as historical facts are also important for understanding urban developments. This part starts with the pre-Vedic developments of the Indus valley, followed by a brief review of the Indian Middle Ages, continued by the Islamic invasions that led to the Mughal Empire. The section continues with introducing the British rule and highlights some facts of the post-independence era. In the second half of the chapter the main religion, Hinduism, is described and some of the main deities of the Hindu pantheon are introduced. This is on the one hand important in all cultures around the world, because a certain believe moulds the cultural heritage of a region. In India, however, religion has a spatial dimension and thus shapes the layout of towns and villages, as will be addressed throughout the book. Finally, the caste system is introduced, because of its importance for the layout of villages and cities, until today.

Planning tools have been known in India long before Europe. Planning treatises were already codified in early Vedic times. This codification connects to Hinduism describing the social structure as well as the ideal form of cities and villages quite precisely. The division of society into different castes also generates rules of conduct between castes. Not only is each individual obliged to live in accordance with rules applying to their caste, there are also a multitude of rules on how to deal with members of other castes. This in turn has implications for the usage of space and influences various aspects of the settlement area and thus its shape. In addition, many Hindu rites and ceremonies have a spatial character. Through diagrams, the mandalas, the believer is made aware of the connection between the human world and the cosmos. Such mandalas can range in size from that of a small picture to encompassing an entire city and are a second source for planning. After introducing mandalas in general, some theoretical urban mandalas are discussed. Then, some of the theoretical texts on town planning are highlighted. Indian planning treatises go far beyond the mere description of settlements, but also deal with a multitude of other aspects, such as how to depict deities and their seats. The chapter ends with a brief description of the profession of town planners. They had a high status in Hindu society, because a town planner needs to know exactly about the connection within society, between the gods and the world, in order to be able to plan cities and villages.

As outlined in the historical part of this book (Chap. 2), the Indian civilisation is among the oldest in the world. The first cities evolved as ports alongside the Indus river in the area of today’s Beluchistan/Pakistan and northern India. These port towns were hubs of long distance trade with remote regions such as Mesopotamia or Egypt. These early cities of the Indus Valley civilisation were already equipped with sanitary systems, tanks, warehouses and dockyards with a sophisticated water sluice systems to enable ships to be loaded and unloaded independently of high and low tides. However, from 1800 BCE onwards cities were abandoned gradually, followed by the whole region and most of the inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilisation moved towards the hilly regions of today’s northern India and into the Gangetic Plain. Although the Indus Valley culture does no longer exist any more, it is evident that the ideas of town planning lived on in India and influenced India’s town planners ever since.

Homes are the smallest units of settlements, such as a village or an urban agglomeration. It is the space that connects the family or individual with the wider city. The size of the houses, the location of their entrances that connect the house with the adjacent neighbourhood, the outlook of the facades, to just name a few specifics, shape the entire cityscape by their plot formats as well as their heights and materiality. The most common type of house in India is the courtyard house, although this varies significantly from region to region. These differences result from landscape and climatic conditions, as well as from the available building materials. The chapter starts with an introduction to the ancient planning rules for houses, followed by a description of five traditional house types as well as contemporary forms, from the desert to the Himalayas to the southern tip of India. They were chosen to highlight how the same concept of courtyard house was adapted to the local needs.

The overarching structure that makes up cities are the public spaces which are discussed here. These include the public areas of a neighbourhood, such as streets, small neighbourhood squares or neighbourhood temples. There are also public spaces meant for the entirety of the city population such as central temples, markets, thoroughfares, public buildings, town walls with the city gates, large water tanks and step-wells, and burial grounds. In India these areas are regularly reaffirmed with rituals to validate the functions of each public space which are described in detail in this chapter.

The worship of the gods still plays an important role in India today. As already explained in the previous chapters the spatial arrangement of temples and shrines played a central role in the worship of gods. The underlying mandalas represent the connection from the divine world to the human world. Especially when temples are built the city is therefore included in the planning process, which is the topic of this chapter. After basic considerations about the design of temples the connection between city and temple is explained here by drawing on three important temple cities, namely Varanasi, Madurai and Srirangam. Varanasi was chosen, because it is until today the most important pilgrimage site for Hindus. In Madurai, the ancient city was dominated by the temple, and although the town walls were demolished in the nineteenth century the original layout of the city is not only visible in the layout of the town, the sacred routes and structures are still used by the inhabitants. Finally, Srirangam is discussed as a planned city. In this case the temple walls surround not only the temple precinct itself but also the residential quarters of the Brahmins in particular.

As kings gained power tin early Medieval times they soon started to manifest these powers also by designing their cities, particularly their capitals. Of core importance was the design and location of their palace, since it should demonstrate the claim to power to the outside world. As an emperor, the palace should be located in the city centre. However, kings were usually not descending from Brahmins, who were the only caste entitled to live close to the city core, so this claim provided difficult. Therefore, in early Medieval times kings started to spin a narrative that linked them to the gods, particularly to Lord Rama, the legendary king and Avatar of Lord Vishnu. According to the Ramayana, one of the major ancient epics, Lord Rama was a just and benevolent ruler and his subjects had achieved prosperity. He lived in his capital Ayodhya which is described as the most beautiful and wealthy city one can think of. In Ayodhya the palace is described to be the most beautiful building of the city, and is located in the vicinity of the city centre. Thus, kings were eager to create magnificent palaces, close to the city centres. Furthermore, kings planned their cities according to the planning treatises to demonstrate their direct nexus. This correlation is discussed in this chapter based on three examples, namely Bhaktapur, Jaipur and Udaipur.

First Islamic rulers entered India in medieval times where they first founded the Delhi Sultanate. Soon Islamic rulers conquered nearly the whole subcontinent, spreading Islam across India. With Islam new ideas of ruling a country were introduced as well as ideas about town planning, palace design and architectural features generally. Since the Islamic emperors of India had nomadic roots the encampment was a role model for cities and palaces. Another new feature that played an important role in Islam was the design of gardens. Gardens play an important role in Islam as they are seen as a reference to heavens. Therefore such gardens were designed with great care in India and equipped with many amenities such as water features, fragrant flowers and shady pavilions. Particularly Islamic garden design was influenced by Persian pre-Islamic ideas. Persian architecture was as well influential in India because Mughal rulers had strong relations to Persia. Persian architecture is a symbiosis of pre-Islamic and Islamic building traditions and influenced particularly the Indian subcontinent which is the topic here. The chapter starts with in introduction to planning paradigms of Islamic countries and highlights architecture deriving from Persia. Next, the elements, namely gardens and forts are described. Finally, Fatehpur Sikri is described, which is a good example for a planned Muslim city.

As British officers gained power over India, architectural and urban planning ideas from the British homelands were introduced to India. The British occupants considered themselves superior and thus separated their neighbourhoods from the existing Indian cities. British occupants brought along British planning ideas as well as their architecture. The new English towns, the cantonments, were built outside the Indian core towns in order to keep a distance from the Indians. However, the climatic conditions were demanding for the British, particularly in summer times. Therefore, the wealthier British occupants moved to the mountains during the summers, where they created new towns, the Hill Stations. When the British crown was officially declared to rule over India, it was decided to make this claim visible in the urban fabric. The chosen planning paradigms derived from the European ideas of Enlightenment, which was seen to be the ideal concept to transport grandeur of the powerful British crown.

The last episode deals with the people of India who have always been excluded from society: the Dalits, the untouchables who live in slums today. Dalits have always been an important labour force for the “legal” population, as Dalits performed the jobs that higher castes were not allowed to do. Dalits were and still are active in households and on the streets of the “legal” city during the day, and then return to the slums during the evening hours. Short distances are of great importance to slum dwellers, which is why slums developed along the old city boundaries, often now located in city centres as cities have grown. The example of Dharavi, Mumbai, is used to show how on the one hand slum dwellers provide an important economic service to Mumbai, but on the other hand are being pushed out of their areas, especially by the new middle class who claims the slum areas for itself and neoliberal urban planning ideas.

In the last chapter the main findings of the book are concluded by bringing together the different synthesis that were presented in the nine episodes that were described in the previous chapters. This conclusion summarises the built cultural heritage of India with its various facets, starting from pre-historic times. This chapter, too, aims to identify future research within the field of urban design in India, but also elsewhere.