Chandigarh
Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northwestern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the remaining directions. Chandigarh constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which also includes the adjacent satellite cities of Panchkula in Haryana and Mohali in Punjab. It is located 260 km northwest of New Delhi and 229 km southeast of Amritsar and 104 km southwest of Shimla.
Chandigarh is one of the earliest planned cities in post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, which built upon earlier plans created by the Polish architect Maciej Nowicki and the American planner Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city were designed by a team headed by Le Corbusier and British architects Dame Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. Chandigarh's Capitol Complex—as part of a global ensemble of Le Corbusier's buildings—was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO at the 40th session of the World Heritage Conference in July 2016.
Chandigarh has grown greatly since its initial construction, and has also driven the development of Mohali and Panchkula; the tri-city metropolitan area has a combined population of over 1,611,770. The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. The union territory has the third-highest Human Development Index among Indian states and territories. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics ranked it as the happiest city in India on the happiness index. In 2015, an article published by the BBC identified Chandigarh as one of the few master-planned cities in the world to have succeeded in terms of combining monumental architecture, cultural growth, and modernisation.
Etymology
The name Chandigarh means "fort of Chandi" and is a compound of Chandi, which refers to the Hindu goddess Chandi, a manifestation of Shakti, and Garh, meaning stronghold or fortress. The name is taken from a village where a temple dedicated to goddess Chandi stood. The temple exists today at Chandi Mandir, on the outskirts of the city, in the neighbouring district of Panchkula in Haryana.The motif or sobriquet of "The City of Beauty" was derived from the City Beautiful movement, which was a popular philosophy in North American urban planning during the 1890s and 1900s. Architect Albert Mayer, the initial planner of Chandigarh, lamented the American rejection of City Beautiful concepts and declared, "We want to create a beautiful city". The phrase was used as a logo in official publications in the 1970s and is now how the city describes itself.
History
Partition and independence
The establishment of the city of Chandigarh was the result of the crises and chaos in northwestern India in the aftermath of its independence from British colonial rule. During the partition of India in 1947, the province of Punjab was divided into two: the majority Hindu and Sikh eastern portion that remained in India and the majority Muslim western portion that became part of Pakistan. Lahore, the provincial capital of undivided Punjab, though fiercely contested during partition, was eventually ceded to Pakistan. The provincial government of independent India’s East Punjab state was left without an administrative center or capital.The loss of Lahore, the need for the rehabilitation of refugees from West Pakistan and a mounting exodus of business communities from the state created a sense of urgency. Shimla, the former summer capital of both British India and the Punjab province, partially housed the government of East Punjab state. Shimla’s inability to fully contain the administrative machinery resulted in government offices to be scattered at several places across the state, imposing difficulties and costs on the public as well as the government.
Conception and initial planning
It was decided by representatives of the government of India and of the state of East Punjab to build a new capital for the state, because attaching capital functions to an existing city—all of which were considered inadequate and had swollen in size due to migration of refugees from West Pakistan—was considered as costly as building a new city.The new capital needed to have enough space for government machinery, for resettlement of refugees and their businesses, for expansion, and adequate rail, road and air connectivity; it also had to assuage the psychological loss of partition, its construction supposed to stimulate the state's devastated economy, as well as being a 'symbolic gesture' of unity, stability, and an assertion of India’s newfound sovereignty. India’s erstwhile Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru personally endorsed the project, remarking: The capital was to be located in the most populous part of the state, between the Doaba and Ambala districts, and projected to hold about 500,000 people. Several existing cities and towns across the state were considered for the possible development of the new capital, but all rejected for different reasons. Political lobbying also made the selection of an existing city as the new capital difficult. The absence of political consensus on the location of the new capital and the large costs involved threatened the project.
In 1948, three possible sites were settled upon, one lying in the Ambala district, one in Ludhiana, and one, the most preferred of the three, being partially in Ambala and Patiala state. The first site, in Ambala district’s Kharar tehsil, was ultimately selected to be the location of the new capital after aerial reconnaissance by Parmeshwari Lal Varma and Prem Nath Thapar. The name of the new city derived from a temple dedicated to Hindu goddess Chandi present in one of these villages. The location was praised by the later team of the city's architects for being beautiful and practical.
Agricultural lands, including large mango groves, of fifty-eight villages with a population of 21,000 people were to be affected by the construction of the city, involving the displacement of many of them. The affected villagers, encouraged and supported by political parties, began agitating against the project. Political opposition to the project also stemmed from a desire for relocation of the new capital to sites favourable to the opponents. The government reached an agreement with the affected villagers in October 1950, and established a local committee to advise on rehabilitation of displaced people, thus ending the agitation.
Masterplan
Mayer plan
It was decided by the state government that a town planner for Chandigarh would be selected after interviewing several of them in England. However, Nehru suggested that a town planner already present in India and familiar with it be hired instead, and recommended two such people. One of them—Albert Mayer, an American town planner—was selected in December 1949 to design the master plan of Chandigarh. Mayer’s recruitment received extensive international media attention. Mayer enlisted several experts from the US to aid him in preparing the masterplan of Chandigarh, including Matthew Nowicki, a US-based Polish architect, who was to work on the city’s architectural design.Mayer produced a fan-shaped plan, spreading southward between the Patiala-ki-rao and Sukhna Cho streams, with the capitol located on a promontory in Sukhna's fork at the upper margin, a university at the very north, a railway station to the east, an industrial area to the southeast and a commercial block in the center. The city was to be made up of several neighbourhood units, or superblocks, arranged in districts of various shapes roughly one-by-half kilometre in size, each containing residences, bazaar, schools, parks, health centres, theatres and meeting halls. The superblocks were to be arranged in a curvilinear street layout with adequate road space for future motor traffic. Mayer’s plan was based on the ideals of the Garden City movement and the Radburn idea.
While Mayer provided a masterplan and Nowicki gave a detailed draft for one neighbourhood unit, Chandigarh also required an architect to develop the architectural design of the city and its structures. Nowicki had also prepared a preliminary design for the capitol complex, and had agreed to join the city's architectural development independently of Mayer. In August 1950, Nowicki died in a plane crash, and Mayer was unlikely to be able to execute the masterplan without his assistance. This, coupled with Mayer's extended leaves from the state and mounting expenses due to adverse USD exchange rates, resulted in Mayer—who was still keen on continuing the project—being dropped from the plan.
Corbusier plan
Between November and December 1950, Thapar and Varma travelled to Europe to find replacements and recruited a four-member team headed by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, also including English couple-duo Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, and Corbusier’s cousin Pierre Jeanneret. Fry, Drew and Jeanneret were to work at Chandigarh for three years, while Corbusier would make two visits every year, each lasting one month. The association of the city with Corbusier catapulted it into global limelight. Corbusier came to India in February 1951, and joined Fry and Jeanneret who had arrived earlier. They were joined by Indian staff in Shimla, including a team of young Indian architects and town-planners who were to learn from them as much as assist them.Although told to adhere to Mayer’s masterplan, the new team considered it inadequate and made significant modifications, much to Mayer's dismay as he tried in vain to retain it. Corbusier assumed control of the masterplan and designed buildings of the capitol complex, while the rest of the team directed construction work and designed other buildings of the city. Key components of the previous plan were incorporated into the new one—the positions of the central commercial block, the railway station, the industrial area, and the capitol complex remained roughly similar; the university was moved to the west, the superblocks were retained, but expanded, standardised and named 'sectors'. The overall density was increased by 20%. The earlier curvilinear street plan was replaced with a rectilinear grid plan, with a seven-tiered road system consisting the highway, the central axes, arterial roads, market roads, sector circulation roads, residential streets and pedestrian walkways. The new plan was quickly accepted by officials.
The capitol complex was designed to contain four main buildings: the Palace of Assembly, the High Court of Justice, the Secretariat, and a fourth structure—earlier the Governor’s Palace and later Museum of Knowledge—whose construction was deferred. Also included in it were several monuments, notably the Monument of the Open Hand. Initial plan envisioned the capitol complex to dominate the city, but in later plans artificial hills were used to visually separate the two. It was to be independent India's 'answer' to the British built complex in New Delhi. The city centre was designed by Corbusier to contain commercial and administrative buildings with a central pedestrian plaza.