Cities
Tracing Transformation of Public Spaces | Amita Sinha
LA 50 |
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| An urban narrative that traces the history of the urban landscape back to. With focus on the street and squares that make up the public realm, the book touches upon the ideals of modernity- a democratic public realm and a healthy urban habitat- and how well they have fared in the years since their inception against the backdrop of the traditional Indian society.
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Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism
Author: Jyoti Hosagrahar
Published: Routledge, New York, 2005
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One of the few books written on the urban history of South Asia, Indigenous Modernities describes and interprets social and environmental changes in the private and public spheres taking place in Delhi between 1857 and 1947. While the many cities of Delhi have received much attention in the plethora of books that cover the architectural glories of Shahjahanabad and New Delhi, works on social history are scant. Narayani Gupta's Delhi between Two Empires, set a precedent that Hosragrahar follows in tracing transformations occurring in the window of time that ushered in modernity, in arenas of interest to planning historians.i In six chapters she traces the fragmentation of the domestic spaces of havelis; withdrawal of the community from the public spaces; and privatization and commodification of community property. She proposes that we read these changes and their outcomes not as pale or imperfect version of European modernism but something different in which traditional and modern, old and new, coexisted uneasily in a state of dynamic tension, in a fluid, ever changing dialectic. What one sees in modernization of Delhi are not ideal types as envisaged by the global project of modernity, but hybrid forms. New housing typologies, novel public institutions, and urban infrastructure introduced in this period were characterized by hybridity.
In the aftermath of the Uprising/First War of Independence in 1857, havelis within the walled city suffered from neglect and were converted into warehouses and smaller residential units. These large houses, residences of landowning gentry, had been the economic and social mainstay of entire neighbourhoods, populated by artisans plying trades supported by the haveli owners. At the same time, the rising entrepreneurial classes sought to live in hybrid versions of courtyard housing and European-style bungalows. Although the courtyards shrank and extended families disintegrated, older lifestyles did not disappear entirely.
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