Delhi’s Urban Dilemma
The Indian experiment is still in its early stages, and its outcome may well turn out to be the most significant of them all, partly because of its sheer human scale, and partly because of its location-a bridgehead of liberty on the Asian continent. Asia is today the most economically dynamic region in the world, but it is also one where huge numbers of people remain politically subjugated. Its leaders have confidently asserted that the idea and practice of democracy is somehow inappropriate and intrusive to the more sober cultural manners of their people. The example of India is perhaps the most pointed challenge to these arguments.
- Sunil Khilnani in “The Idea of India”
Replantation has startet since most of the trees already outlived their lives (ZDP- zone D).
Ever since its conception in 1962, the Master Plan of Delhi has remained the primary legal document guiding developmental directions of the city over 20 years at a stretch. The vision for Delhi’s future as stated in the most recent Master Plan (MPD 2021) states; “The Vision 2021 is to make Delhi a global metropolis and a world-class city, where all the people are engaged in productive work with a decent standard of living and quality of life in a sustainable environment.” The first half of this challenging ambition has commenced at an unprecedented pace a ll across the city and even more at its peripheries visibly transforming Delhi’s
urbanscape towards its contemporary global dreams. The second half of this vision, namely to create a sustainable city of productive living for all, is where we are deeply concerned with.
So far the present Master Planning process in Delhi has by and large been a top-down approach focused on expansion based strategies including concepts of functional zoning, neighborhood planning, hierarchical commercial centers, etc. However, this centralized controlled planning system through strict zoning of functions seems to be in clear conflict with present city demands and ground realities while thrusting the entire sphere of the metropolitan developmental pattern towards an unsustainable future. Viewed from the dual perspective of compactness and sustainability, erstwhile planning directions for Delhi have been continuously traversing the opposite path. The development of the city beyond urban limits through ‘new’ areas of expansion characterized the pattern of growth through three decades of planning between the 60’s to the 90’s, often sacrificing fertile agricultural land as well as engulfing numerous villages from the surrounding hinterland. During the post-liberalization era of the 90’s, unprecedented and rapid growth of the cities immediate to Delhi’s borders reinforced the marginalization of economically weaker groups, devastated agrarian economies and embraced blind compulsions of global market forces. From the beginning of this millennium such indications of un-sustainable, un-controlled growth also affected inner city vacant areas that succumbed to global demands of consumerism against proposed centers of work and social amenities. The forthcoming latest MPD 2021 with its ambition to make Delhi a “world class city” seems to have further established this growing and disturbing trend through all its policy formulations for planned development of the city.
Planned development of Delhi has hinged around, apart from other important ones, two salient ideas – the notion of functional zoning and hierarchical distribution of commercial functions. While the first has shaped Delhi’s functional and operational dynamics along the same lines as that of modernist cities of the West, the latter has tried to concentrate commercial activity within the city in pre-determined pockets of land parcels in various parts of the city. Over the last four decades of planned intervention in the city these two generic ideas have been put to severe test with acute and sometimes violent departures from the planned to the real manifestations of urban activities in Delhi. Added to this has been the growing divide between the recipients of planned development focused towards the more affluent against the larger majority of those who remain socially or economically less privileged.
Delhi’s Master Planning framework is based on a hierarchical system of developmental zones addressing different levels of population needs starting from the neighborhood; the community, the district and further to the zonal and city-level. For each of the identified planning units, policies and decisions are to be correspondingly articulated through the overall Master Plan document at the broadest level and then through Zonal Development Plans (ZDPs) to Local Area Plans (LAPs), and finally Layout Plans for detailed guidelines and regulations. As of now, even after six decades of planned intervention, DDA is yet to fully delineate and operationalize the next level of planned hierarchy, namely the ZDPs.Further articulation of specific areas and localities through the next two levels has not been commenced yet! It is here that the seeds of disjunction between the planned imagination of the city and its existent realities primarily lie. Over the years, numerous instances of misinterpretation, “illegality”, conflicts and contestations have plagued the path of urban development and growth in the city.
In the Office Commercial Zone in New Delhi water, food, office depots is sold at the street. In relation to the Zonal Development Plan it’s not prohibited to have a restaurant, cafeteria or related trade, (zone D)
Depot store in zone D
In fact, Delhi today faces settings encompassing significant polarities, more often than not contesting and conflicting with each other as well as with the rest of the city at large. Thus the city keeps oscillating between opposing conditions of legal-illegal, public-private, built-open, protected-free, urban-rural and most recently…..local-global. So far, planning directions in Delhi have managed to selectively dwell on one against the other, thereby escalating the conditions of fragmentation at both levels of the social and physical fabric of city spaces. The example of Delhi’s “urban villages” becomes a glaring example of some of these dichotomies facing the city today. As the term itself suggests this definition of a village carries along with it the dilemma of a city trying to grapple between the divergent imaginations of the rural as juxtaposed with the urban. The Khirki village along with the beautiful Khirki Masjid as its centre-piece and its surrounding urban development forms a typical case to the above complex debate. The following piece should throw some light on the prevailing situation in the urban planning attempts on Delhi city.
The Khirki Masjid, built in 1375 AD by Khan-i-Jahan Junan Shah is a “protected” monument in what is known as South Delhi today. It is protected as a monument of national significance under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Act of 1962. Under this act, the monument and its surrounding areas are “protected” from unwanted development, misuse and decay. All around this monument, unlike the structure itself, is a living habitat; the village of Khirki which, through past centuries, has seen the replacement of the original Muslim population around the central mosque to the present Hindu community. Like numerous other villages across this city, Khirki also got rapidly engulfed within the folds of growing urbanization. And like all other villages again, the inhabited village domain of Khirki has been further “protected” by a Lal Dora (red thread)….a legal boundary benevolently allowing the village to retain for itself its identity and community while charting its own path of growth and progress. All this, while the city around frets and fumes, jostles and pushes its way up the metropolitan ladder with larger and larger dreams of never-ending visions to accomplish.
As per the ASI Act, an area up to a radius of 100m around the monument is a demarcated zone where no permissible change is allowed (including re-building a crumbling haveli or house of a living family!). If that was not enough, a further area up to a radius of 300m from the monument is demarcated as a zone of limited change with due sanction from the ‘appropriate’ authority (in this case, the ASI). On the other hand, as we walk out of Khirki village each evening, a mes merizing dream sequence of lights unfolds in front of our eyes. Golden trinkets of tiny lights dance down illuminated, manicured shrubs and trees…. Shimmering pools of light herald each step one takes forward…. Bright neon streaks in myriad hues proclaim the store names of all famous brands across the world…. Countless red and yellow tail-lights of the choicest cars in town get gently swallowed by the darkness of the underground. The Press Enclave road next to the village suddenly finds itself transformed from a lazy, occasionally used, connector of a few apartment blocks, residential colonies, forgotten urban villages and historic monuments only a couple of years back into the main busy, crowded approach road for ultra- modern specialty hospitals, 5-star hotel, cineplexes, shopping malls, district courts, international schools and such like! It is in this contrasting dichotomy between an erstwhile peaceful community of villagers and predominantly middle income residents against the new breed of global citizens and brand activities that interesting episodes of urban drama could get enacted, the beginnings of which can already be visible as introductory previews. Along that stretch of the Press Enclave road where the swanky ‘Select City Mall’ plaza on one side and green ‘buffer’ with tied buffaloes on the other side, face each other this ironic juxtaposition could not be more vivid. Around the forgotten ‘Khirki Masjid’ or the forlorn ramparts of the historic ‘Satpula’ dam, another world of past heritage and accompanied sensibilities get overlaid with the processes of a vibrant future.
Khirki Masjid (Mosque). Heritage Zone is an area, which has significant concentration, linkage or continuity of buildings, structures, groups or complexes united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical development.
A sign with information about the area - the Heritage Zone - around a monument. Lot of housing is placed in this zone.
This area represents two extremes of functional status. At one end, all areas immediate to the Khirki Masjid have been deprived from any functional change thanks to the laws around protected monuments in this country. Ironically this has ensured a certain degree of calm and subdued scale around the masjid in the core of the village. On the other hand, is the complete chaos of frenzied construction work of new malls, cineplexes, corporate offices, recreational centers and the like! Had it not been for the stifling law, Khirki village also perhaps would have lost its quiet rural mind to the frenetic madness of retail and commercial real-estate development. Initially the land around Khirki Village was essentially agricultural. Over the years, this agricultural land has given way to dense residential pockets, both within the village and its adjoining ‘extension’. Local small shops and kiosks, mostly in the ground floor of the houses create small stretches of commercial zones catering to the local population while small scale factories, cottage industries and workshops have mushroomed in various parts of these extension zones. It is only a few public areas like some of the parks, temple precincts, street junctions that witness a collective group of people from within the village.
Towards the south, outside the realms of the village the Saket District center in the name of Select City Walk, MGF Metropolitan Mall, DLF Place….. continues to come up at unimaginable speed and zest. Conceptually, as per the Master Plan, district centers were supposed to be work, shopping, cultural and recreational centers for a collection of neighborhoods in this city. They were therefore envisaged to be the place for existing communities to converge for their diverse needs. Today, this social purpose of such a center catering to its immediate residential communities has all but vanished. Instead what clearly gets visible is the urge for the city to only go the global way.
The Plan stipulates the land up to the depth of one peripheral village revenue boundary would be maintained as Green Belt. Activities permitted in green belt zones is listet; Wild life sanctuary, Bird sanctuary, Biodiversity Park, Police Post etcetera.
A former artificially built body of water is rebuilt in another site, across the street. Satpula dam was built outside the city in order to regulate water supply.