Program__Unearthing possibilities for Faridabad

Thoughts for the design thesis

All that follows below is from the perspective of a student of urban design. My thoughts at this stage are fragmented and lacks the support from facts/ concrete evidence.This which shall eventually build up!

Introduction_ Faridabad city has been planned along the infrastructure corridor and on sector model following the Chandigarh model. Lying South of Delhi, the city has been a strong industrial center and a satellite town complementing Delhi. It  is still reckoned with its entrepreneurial spirit in the post independence period. The planning of the city proper  began  after partition when camps were setup for displaced persons  from the north west frontier province in 1950s. Before this Faridabad existed as a small hamlet whose origins can be traced back to 1607.

The spatial centre of the city is an infrastructure corridor combining interstate highway, railway and the future metro link. This pragmatic planning gives  fast connectivity to Delhi and also into the surrounding province. However this linkage has  hindered  the  east-west connectivity across the city and has led to a linear north-south growth. 

moving away from the 'piece meal' approach...

Intention_ 1  Examine the shortcomings and potential of an infrastructure corridor running through the centre of the city and then work out a strategy to bridge the socio-spatial gap between east and west parts of the city across the infrastructure corridor. Also the metro link presents new possibilities of bridging across.

Intention_2   Establish a network of public spaces which connect across fragments and  economic sections of the city.The orthogonal existence of sectors coexists with the healthy disorder of surviving villages, slums and  older parts of the city.  

The planning of sectors as introverted and self sufficient units has not succeeded. Some reasons: 1) The  lack of connectivity  across sectors 2) Strict zoning has  prevented emergence of  a more working urbanity in the residential areas and also  failure of many  planned market centres. 3) The introverted model of sector puts a challenge for a  feasible network of public transportation. The city still does not have its own public transport system and the consequence is people's  over dependence of private vehicles.4) The model of  'Low density green living' has backfired. The  lack of a critical mass for vibrant  urbanization, public transportation etc. has stalled the city's growth. 

Intention_3 The city's growth and its proud attribute as the industrial city of Haryana is closely knitted to developments post-Independence. Integrating this  enterpenural spirit of the city with its institutions  and establishing interface between the city and its people at various levels. 








A strategy for transformation 
-  From a  monotonous  single family living  towards a vibrant mix of uses, economic  classes,  building typologies and  activities. Establish a spatial framework which utilizes existing  urban networks and unearths potential connections. 
-  Functional green which 1) reuses and revives the existing  dead green zones   2)  addresses city living across ages 4) connects city life to the countryside and the arid native landscape
5) revive the remaining of the earliest rural structure which probably was replaced orthogonal land division after land consolidation. 

Observations from site

The physical barrier_ Mathura road

Observation__From the sector side onto the highway. The road at present takes the regional traffic from Delhi to Agra. Fortunately the highway is planned to be moved outside the city limits. At present, the service roads are active sites for transport interchange, temporary vendors and small-medium workshops and enterprises.

Speculation__The informal and temporal character along the service road could be utilized towards developing programs and activities which are related to transit, goods interchange, public transport etc.which would eventually serve as connections between the metro stops and sectors. The idea is to create conditions for temporal activites to happen without putting them into the frame of formal.

Mall mania_ development in Sector12

Observation__the commercial strip, as marked in the development plan of city, could have been much more than isolated developments lacking any vision from city's authorities. Faridabad seems to have followed similar strategy as Gurgaon of allowing all mall like commercial spaces in close proximity.However, the authorities are at waiting for private developers to build the public space. The three malls( see picture) at present dot the open undeveloped landscape of this part of the city.
Speculation__ Instead of resulting into a mono functional- gentrified urban space, the private developments have the greatest possibility of coming together to create a continuous urban experience.Also the relevance of time based strategic planning instead of an eternally applicable master planning comes to the fore!


From city beautiful to  city montage
The city of distincitve mono-zoning gives way to undirected hetrozoning, just as monoprogrammatic buildings give way to hetro-programmatic buildings. Work'here', play'there', and live 'elsewhere' gives way to a 'work-play','live-work' and 'play-live' hetrotopic urban fabric. (Boyer1990,127)
In Faridabad's case, the  rupture of a strict zoning and the  master plan needs to be acknowledged as signs of a working city where the everyday urbanity needs no coherence with grand schemes.  












City periphery_  eastern edge 

analysis

city in the region 
on its way...
 

Mapping_ every day life


R residence W place of work B shopping
S education E  entertainment
The mapping has been done for 8 families. The group was chosen from a school in the city( see concentration of W)

Intention_How people move across the city in their day to day lives? And what are the emerging nodes of commercial activity?

Some inferences:

- Movement across the highway is limited.NIT-1 is the only commercial area which is visited by 6 out of 8 families. 

- Place of stay and shopping are usually close by

- The malls along the highway are a common destination for all families. The location  of malls along the highway has  given them better accessibility. 

- The already established commercial centre on south side( see high concentration of B) of the city is not accessed by families living in the northern end. Another  center(s) seems to be emerging in the northern part. 

The ideas of a  residential sector_comparing across

institutional &commercial use

major green structures

The city's planning  after independence is  inspired by the garden city model but has a more compact residential density. Named as The New Industrial Township(NIT), the planning in this part of the city is distinct from the surrounding orthogonal sectors which were later planned on the Chandigarh model under haryana urban development authority( HUDA).  

Similarities:

- The  centers of both types of sectors   comprise  of institutions and green structures. The intention has been to keep strong distinction between residential, commercial and institutional uses.

- Low rise residential density

Differences:

- NIT sectors are more compact and the division into smaller quarters within each sector  is visible in the urban structure

- The urban morphology is characterized by smaller plot sizes and a finer grain as against the HUDA sectors which are more spread out 

- The attempt is to establish a network of green spaces and institutions in HUDA sectors  while in the case of NIT sectors  the identity of  institutional core is distinct from its residential periphery. 




the urban morphologies_comparison across different parts
on its way....

References

RELEVANT EXCERPTS 


Master planning and the 'city beautiful'

 Urban Planning in India; Das Biswaroop;Social Scientist, Vol. 9, No. 12 (Dec., 1981), pp. 53-67

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3517133
The master plans drawn after independence however followed the introvert British model of a "neighbourhood" concept with segregate housing. Even in the new housing estates of big cities the same principle prevailed. There emerged a host of 'development authorities" like the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Bombay Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA), Madras Metropolitan Development Authority (M MDA) and so on. The master plans prepared by these authorities and also by the various town planning departments of state governments followed the same pattern. The main features of these plans were: a) designing of land use with a future perspective; b) a city without slums, or in other words, a standard "decent" house for everyone; c) detailed modernized Central Business District (CBD); d) division of major land use into zones, e) an efficient highway and transportation system, and f) adequate community facilities with residential areas divided into "neighbourhoods". But most of these beautifully designed maps could not be implemented because i) the time was slipping away or had already given way to land speculation, ii) there was overlapping of powers (implicit "confusion") between lacal bodies and development authorities, and iii) the land use had been changing at many a place unguided and haphazardly. Enforcement of regulations failed to work in many cities and many "master plans" became obsolete considering the context, comprehensiveness and objectivity. * All these "master plans" were greatly influenced by the regulatory controls prevailing in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and did not take into consideration the prevailing urban economic structure of the country. Hence the drawings remained much dominated by slogans and ideas of "city beautiful" rather than "city functional"

speculations

These speculations  are intuitive thoughts, put to test....

Establishing structural links between east and west which connect  major commercial centres, institutional areas and also strengthen the connection of the city  to other cities( Gurgaon and Noida) and surrounding villages. A series of  urban links of  high density and mixed use which have a possibility of supporting  public transportation network. 

-  Recognizing the existing  village clusters( within some of the sectors) and integrating them with these new linkages. 

The potential and  need for connecting across the commercial centers of the city shall be my main focus for design project.  I imagine the network of public spaces comprising of these major structural linkages( high density, faster mobility, more dynamic land use etc.) and then secondary  linkages into the  existing residential quarters.

Zooming in towards detailed interventions:

The first site is a cross section through the city connecting the major centers that is old Faridabad bazaar and NIT-5. The existing connection is one of the older links and is heavily used by local working people. 

The second site presents great potential for connecting across the bazaar of NIT-1 with the planned commercial center of Sector12 ( presently has some Malls), the mini secretariat area( cluster of government offices and  law court) and also gives a direct link across the irrigation canals.

studio urban dynamics

The project strives to bring together the local and global flows with greater pragmatism while acknowleding the mammoth-ic importance of Olympic park to Beijing . The Olympic park thrives on the singular image built around the presence of Nest and water cube which are indeed the global icons for Beijing. However, the international attention is gathered around a singular idea of international spectacles and limits the everyday possibilities of the site. The strategy has been to activate the site with a multitude of activities which blur the rigid boundaries between the global, local and also help re-situate the park in its physical context. The strategic plan is expressed as a 'collage of defining ideas', acknowledging the fact that such a scale can neither be tackled by an individual nor can be limited to a time frame.