This article traces the long-term development of the neighborhood unit concept in Indian planning practice and literature. By concentrating on the role and actions of post-independence planners, this article also explains the steps through which they reconciled neighborhood unit’s perceived foreign-ness with its imagined potential for national development. It concludes that while planners assimilated the concept in planning practice rather successfully, their efforts eventually mattered little because a host of urban actors gradually transformed the built neighborhoods to the extent that they represent a distinct form of urbanism today.
Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 50.
2.
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 32.
3.
See, J. Dahir, The Neighborhood Unit Plan: Its spread and Acceptance (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1947); C. Silver, ‘‘Neighborhood Planning in Historical Perspective,’’ Journal of American Planning Association 51 (1985): 161-74. See also, D. L. Johnson, ‘‘Origin of the Neighborhood Unit,’’ Planning Perspectives 17 (2002): 227-45; and L. L. Lawhon, ‘‘The Neighborhood Unit: Physical Design or Physical Determinism?,’’ Journal of Planning History 8 (2009): 111-32.
4.
The straightforward typology specifies four basic design elements: Civic institutions such as a school and community center, parks and playgrounds, convenience stores, and a hierarchal configuration of streets that allows all public facilities to be within safe pedestrian access. Perry also prescribed six simple principles to describe the relationship between the design elements; and to clarify details such as the size of the unit, design of the road network, organization of open spaces, shops, and institutions, and provision of a distinct boundary, like an arterial road, that demarcates the neighborhood and discourages through traffic. See C. A. Perry, ‘‘The Neighborhood unit, a scheme of Arrangement for the Family-Life Community.’’ Monograph one, Neighborhood and Community planning, Regional Plan of New York and its Environs (New York: Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, 1929), 2-140.
5.
He used the concept to devise a zoning plan and residential extension to the Mysore Iron and Steel plant at Bhadravati. See O. H. Koenigsberger, ‘‘New Towns in India,’’ Town Planning Review 23 (1952): 94-131 and R. W. Liscombe, ‘‘In-dependence: Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Urban Resettlement in India,’’ Planning Perspectives 21 (2006): 157-78.
6.
For a comprehensive account of contemporary political and social context that facilitated neighborhood unit concept’s introduction in Indian planning, see, S. Vidyarthi, ‘‘Reimagining the Neighborhood unit for India,’’ in Crossing Borders: International Exchange and Planning Practices, ed. Patsy Healey and Richard Upton (London: Routledge, 2010).
7.
See, P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) and D. Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
8.
K. Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal, eds, Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 2.
9.
Chaired by Sir Joseph Bhore of the Indian Civil Service, the committee was constituted by the colonial government in 1943 and submitted its report in 1946. See, Health Survey and Development (Bhore) Committee. Volume 1-4 ( Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1946).
10.
Town and Country Planning Organization (TCPO) , Urban and Regional Planning and Development in India ( New Delhi: TCPO, Ministry of Urban Affairs and Employment, Government of India, 1996), 22.
11.
Ibid., 21.
12.
Ravi Kalia, Chandigarh: In search of an Identity (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 25.
13.
Koenigsberger was Director in the Ministry of Health, Government of India and also the senior-most planner in the country at the time. See, Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI), Silver Jubilee Year Book (New Delhi: Institute of Town Planners, India, 1976), 102.
14.
S.V. Ward, Planning the Twentieth Century City (Chichester: John Wiley, 2002), 8.
15.
Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI) , ‘‘Autumn Planning Seminar and State Planning Officials’ Conference at Lucknow,’’Journal of the Institute of Town Planners, India12 (November 1955): 8-28.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Uttar Pradesh TownPlanning Organization, Progressive Uttar Pradesh: Town Planning (Lucknow: New Government Press, 1952), 4.
18.
Itpi, ‘‘Autumn Planning Seminar and State Planning Officials’ Conference at Lucknow,’’9.
19.
Many contemporary publications highlight these themes. For instance, see Uttar Pradesh Town Planning Organization, Progressive Uttar Pradesh: Town Planning, 3.
20.
Four senior and now-retired planners were interviewed in semi-structured and open-ended format. Barring one who was in late eighties, others were in mid to late seventies and had attended graduate school in the United Kingdom or the United States in late 1940s or early 1950s. On average, the interviews lasted about 90 minutes and two planners were interviewed twice.
21.
National Institute for Urban Affairs, Jawahar Lal Nehru on building a New India (New Delhi: National Institute for Urban Affairs, 1991), 57.
22.
Civil lines, a euphemism for the sequestered European quarter in South Asian cities, were planned by the colonial British during the nineteenth century. The Civil Lines was a residential settlement of broad and regular streets with bungalows set among vast lots. The construction of Civil Lines was a significant event in the narrative of Indian cities as it represented a decisive break from the indigenous city that was seen by the colonial British as unhygienic, chaotic, and incomprehensible. See, Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities (New York: Routledge, 2005).
23.
M. Khan, ‘‘Cultural Transfers: The Repossession of Architectural Form,’’Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre1-2 (1994): 84-103.
24.
The elitist bent behind ‘‘educating’’ the poor residents stands out in many of the later writings as well. For instance, as late as the mid 1980s; Mr. H. U. Bijlani an erstwhile chairman of Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), while writing on urban social facilities, argued that resources must be set aside for educational programs ‘‘which tell the citizens, especially belonging to the economically weaker sections as to how to maintain and look after the physical facilities and personal hygiene.’’ H.U. Bijlani, ‘‘Urban Social Facilities,’’ in South Asian Urban Experience, ed. R. C. Sharma (New Delhi: Criterion Publication, 1988), 68.
25.
See, D. Chakrabarty , Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
26.
Two respondents mentioned the phrase ‘‘moving from old to new’’ to refer to the dominance of the contemporary climate of opinion. Nehru originally, and rather famously, used the phrase in his independence eve address to the constituent assembly. Available online at http://www.harappa.com/sounds/nehru.html (accessed May 14, 2006).
27.
Itpi, ‘‘Autumn Planning Seminar and State Planning Officials’ Conference at Lucknow,’’23.
28.
H. K. Mewada, ‘‘Master Plan for Gauhati (sic),’’ Journal of the Institute of Town Planners, India (January-April 1960): 94-6. Like many of his colleagues, Mewada had attended graduate school in the United States. He studied architecture at Cornell and city planning at University of Illinois in 1950. Ravi Kalia has documented Mewada’s employment of neighborhood unit concept to plan Gandhi Nagar, the new capital city for the state of Gujarat, and believes that Mewada was exposed to Perry’s neighborhood unit in graduate school. See Ravi Kalia, Gandhi Nagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004).
29.
T. Banerjee and W.C. Baer, Beyond the Neighborhood Unit (New York: Plenum, 1984), 20.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Appadurai, ‘‘ Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,’’ 90.
32.
Ibid.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 167.
35.
M. Clinard and B. Chatterjee, ‘‘Urban Community Development,’’ in India’s Urban Future, ed. Roy Turner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 71-93.
36.
S. Vidyarthi , ‘‘Reimagining the Neighborhood Unit for India,’’83.
37.
L.R. Vagale , B.M. Buta, and M.S.V. Rao , ‘‘Faridabad-A Critical Study,’’Planning Thought2 ( 1959): 85-108. And, Nagpur Improvement Trust, Nagpur Master Plan (Nagpur: Government Press, 1953).
38.
K.N. Mishra, The Development of Allahabad: A Master Plan (Allahabad : Kitabistan, 1958), 16.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Town and Country Planning Organization (TCPO), Urban and Regional Planning and Development in India, 23.
41.
Young Indian planners who worked on the DMP were Sayed S. Shafi and Banarsi Das Kambo, who had attended MIT, B. N. Rahalkar, who attended Harvard, R. L. Bawa the University College, London, Sri Manohar, who attended University of North Carolina, Madan Malik the University of Southern California, P. B. Rai who attended Georgia Tech, and B. G. Fernandes the University of California, Berkeley (Interview with Sayed S. Shafi in April 2006).
42.
The American planning team comprised of Gerald Breese a sociologist who is Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology at Princeton University; Bert Hoselitz, a development theorist from the University of Chicago; Britton Harris, a Geographer who was Professor Emeritus of City and regional Planning at University of Pennsylvania, Edward Echeverria a physical and land use planner; Walter Hedden a transportation expert who had worked with the New York Port authority; Arch Doston an International development planner, who recently was Professor Emeritus of Governance at Cornell University and; George Goetschius, a sociologist. Albert Mayer led the team (Interview with Sayed S. Shafi in April 2006). Also see, E. L. Staples, Forty Years: A Learning Curve (New Delhi: The Ford Foundation, 1992), 52.
43.
T. Banerjee, ‘‘Understanding Planning Cultures: The Calcutta Paradox,’’ in Comparative Planning Cultures, ed. Bishwapriya Sanyal (New York: Routledge, 2005), 145-64. However, DMP’s notion of comprehensiveness differed substantially from the meaning of the term in standard American usage. For example, a new public sector agency called the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which had dominant control over Delhi’s urban development including the planning, building, and selling of housing units in the new neighborhoods, was set-up to implement the DMP. Headed by politically appointed civil servants, and not locally elected representatives, DDA undertook large scale ‘‘acquisition’’ of privately owned peripheral lands to implement the DMP. In these respects, DDA’s implementation of DMP marked the initiation of state’s near-monopoly over the development of new neighborhoods and housing-a trend that gradually spread to other parts of India. (Interview with M. N. Joglekar, Executive Director of HUDCO, on April 24, 2006).
44.
Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi ( Delhi: Delhi Development Authority, 1962), 5.
45.
Ibid., 64.
46.
Ibid., Table 8.
47.
Ibid., 7.
48.
Ibid., 1.
49.
Ibid., 64.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Gyan Prakash , Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, 51.
52.
C.A. Perry, ‘‘The Neighborhood unit, a Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-Life Community,’’106.
53.
Delhi Development Authority, Master Plan for Delhi, Volume II, 24.
54.
Ibid., 14.
55.
A total of eighteen planners in the cities of Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore, and Nagpur were interviewed, who were junior to first-generation planners both in age and government service, and, in contrast, had attended graduate school in India.
56.
Gyan Prakash , Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, 213.
57.
J.H. Ansari , ‘‘Evolution of Town Planning Practice and system of Urban Government in India,’’Urban and Rural Planning ThoughtXX, no. 1 (May 1977): 9-23.
58.
Young Indian planners dispersed widely after the publication of DMP. For instance, R. L. Bawa went to Delhi Municipal Corporation in early 1960s and then left in mid-1960s to become the Chief Town Planner of the state of Bihar. In 1980s, he became a Regional Chief in Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).
59.
Town and Country Planning Organization (TCPO), Urban and Regional Planning and Development in India, 24.
60.
Ibid.
61.
Town and Country Planning Organization (TCPO), Town and Country Planning in India (New Delhi: TCPO, Ministry of Health, Government of India), 85.
62.
Chief Town Planner and Architectural Advisor, Master Plan for Jaipur (Jaipur: Government Press, 1976), 37.
63.
Chandra Singh Mehta, Udaipur: A Planning Study, Unpublished thesis, Post-graduate diploma course in Town and Country Planning (New Delhi: School of Planning and Architecture, 1963), 94.
64.
See, for instance, A. K. Kamilia, A Study of Bhubaneswar, Unpublished thesis, Post-graduate diploma course in Town and Country Planning (New Delhi: School of Planning and Architecture, 1964) and T. C. Gowda, Planning Proposal for Mangalore, Unpublished thesis, Post-graduate diploma course in Town and Country Planning (New Delhi: School of Planning and Architecture, 1962).
65.
A.K. Bansal, The Aspect of Urban Design for a State Capital in India, Unpublished thesis, Post-graduate diploma course in Town and Country Planning ( New Delhi: School of Planning and Architecture, 1964).
66.
C. S. Gupte, the first Chief Town Planner to the Government of India visited SPA as an adjunct faculty for many years. He mentioned the importance attached to site visits and study trips in the contemporary syllabi (Interview with Mr. C. S. Gupte, May 2006). Moreover, many journal articles of the time mention the employment of neighborhood unit concept in different parts of India. See, for instance, R. S. Khambatta, ‘‘Master Plan of Township at Vikroli,’’ Journal of Institute of Town Planners, India (July 1960).
67.
M. C. Krishna Swamy, ‘‘New Towns in India,’’Journal of the Institute of Town Planners, India49 (December 1966): 40-51.
68.
Interview with Mr. G. S. Nandiwal, March 2006. Prof. Keeble had incidentally taught at Mr. Nandiwal’s alma mater-The University of Manchester
69.
Swamy, ‘‘New Towns in India,’’ 46.
70.
Thirty-four residents of three neighborhoods, planned during 1970s, were interviewed in semi-structured and open-ended format during the summer of 2006.
