CHANGING FUNCTIONS OF CHANDIGARH AND THEIR PLANNING IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

Blessed by the presiding deity Chandi, the goddess of power, to whom the city owes its name, Chandigarh has an intrinsic beauty and charm. It was conceived amid and shaped out of confusion and crisis that followed the political partition in August 1947 of colonial India into independent nations of India and Pakistan. Begun in 1950, as a capital of post partition province of Punjab, Chandigarh owes its birth to the vision of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, and the genius of French architect, Le Corbusier, who transformed that vision into an enchanting beauty of form compounded of the elements of sum, space and verdure. The city is located in a picturesque setting, with the ragged skyline of the Shivalik hills as its backdrop. The urban boundaries are defined geographically by two seasonal rivulets the Patiali-Ki-Rao on the north-western side and the Sukhna Choe on the south-eastern edge. Between these two natural limits extends the chequered mesh of the grid-iron town plan. The first conceptual master plan was evolved by the American planner, Albert Mayer, in collaboration with the Polish architect, Mathew Nowicki. When the latter was killed is an air crash, Le Corbusier took over the capital project and finalized a grid-iron 1 master plan for the new city, based on a rectangular module called sector. Though city is in its infancy it has achieved so much which would seen impossible for other cities to achieve within 4 decades of its launching it has achieved almost ultimate population of five lakhs. It is still growing at a very fast rate.