City Beautiful - An analysis

City Beautiful - Chandigarh, the only planned city in India which has been immitated throughout the country in one form or the other. Designed about half a century ago it has survived all kinds of pressures on its infrastructure and still retained the tilte. But would it survive the another half?

Let us do a small analysis -

The whole infrastructure of the city including water, sanitation, transport system is built for approximately people based on following alculation -
(48 sectors)x(4 sub parts)x(1200 houses each)x(5 people each) = 11,52,000 people which is I guess a fair estimate.

The population according to 2001 cencus is 9,00,914 people with a decinnial growth rate of 40% approx. Leave apart the transient population.

This means that we wiil approach the limit within this decade.

Repurcussions -

a) Transport system sufferes first due to an unexpected explosion in the number of vehicles. Parking can be taken care to some extent through underground planining. But Safety on roads would definitely go down (But the Traffic Police till now is doing a wonderful job). First impact of it which is quiet visible now would be on the pollution. Next to go would be the squares - some of it has started already. Not to mention that these squares do add to the overall beauty of the city.

b) Water and Sanitation system poses pressure on Sukhna which has already been too much disfigured what I saw of it a decade and a half back. Again a major source of physical beauty would get on the verge of disapperance.

c) Even if these pressures are taken care of and We start building sky scrapers and say in a span of next 30-40 years we create something on the lines of New York. How many parks would exist is the question?

d) For the subject of the impact of these changes on the people of the city beautiful - I guess the answer can be found in the Desmond Morris's book - 'Human Zoo' which does describe impact of such an expansion on people taking cues from the human evolution.

Thus the real question is - If the administration is really aware of all these things what is it doing currently to face these challenges?

Above all, as citizens of City Beautiful, what is that we need to do is the question?
Can we really sit back thinking it to be a passing phase and wait for it to receede?

Manish