Chandigarh – Not a fan!

While having a water cooler conversation with a gentleman from Chandigarh, against my reluctance to indulge, he pushed me to have an opinion on his city. He seemed proud of where he was from and was surprised to learn I wasn’t a fan of it! I had to justify the reasons behind my opinions, and I thought, why not post about them?

1. Personality: Yes, cities have personalities too. I don’t need to define it; you know it very well. Chandigarh does, too. It does in terms of its people, culture, and values, with the exception of the names of its places. For whatever reason, it has numbers! For instance, its ‘city tour’ itinerary is “An Evening in Sector 17: A proper drive of Gedi Route in the evening, which starts from Sector 11 and follows through Sectors 10, 9, 8, and 7!”. Except for James Bond, I did not like anyone with a number for a name. The same goes for places too.
2. If I were a French architect (Le Corbusier) tasked to design a city, I wouldn’t draw vertical and horizontal lines on the ground and call it a city. Instead, a circular design with amenities radiating out would be the most efficient design. It should look like a pizza. Let me know if I need to correct something.
3. The idea that you could draw a chessboard on the ground means there wasn’t anything there in the first place. In India, we have cities that have been continuously inhabited for at least three millennia. We built settlements on mountains and caves. But if they left a piece of land for an architect to build blocks without hindrance, it means it did not fascinate our ancestors to make anything long-lasting in that place. Or he chose to bulldoze them.
4. No flyover, underpass, or foot-over bridges- these ideas of easing traffic conditions get shot down because these are against the city’s characteristics. Let me get this straight: a city designed with ultra-modernism is playing conservatively when it comes to getting modern. Cities are human habitats, not camps or colonies where you look for efficiency for governance and economics alone. They have many purposes, including providing comfortable living places, cultural access, and, most importantly, belongingness. That is possible only when they evolve organically.
5. Finally, let me get brutally honest now: It’s a socialistic utopian idea manifested as a city designed by a French Fascist sanctioned by a socialistic government, designed particularly with the intent of organizing labour for efficiency segregated based on class. I’m not too fond of any single word in that sentence.

As it happens, I am not the only one with this opinion. The critique of this city is not new. For example, this article titled “Behold the fascist who gave us a cold, joyless Chandigarh” states – “With its isolated, self-contained neighbourhoods divided into distantly located sectors, Chandigarh was a subversion of the traditional Indian city, encouraging more significant social interaction among its citizens.“

Let me know what you think.