COMMONWEALTH GAMES 2010 DELHI URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATIONS

Abstract

Cities today are a witness and host to national and international events, which require huge development expenditure and have wide implications on the city development process. The Commonwealth Games to be hosted in New Delhi 2010 is one such event which will give impetus not only to games infrastructure but will also help the city in augmenting its services for the benefits of its citizens. All these planned construction projects having multilateral impact on the city development need to be studied in a comprehensive manner so that these can bring about wholesome urban development. Therefore the aim of the study is to assess the impact of Commonwealth Games 2010 on Delhi's urban development. The study has been carried out in 4 stages. The stage 1 involves the literature review in which background study has been done to identify possible impacts that a mega event has on the host cities. In stage 2, information was gathered on the infrastructure being developed for the Games from various authorities. Stage 3 is the analysis stage, where the information gathered was analysed in terms of the possible implications that these developments will have on the city. The analysis led to the study of zone E in detail where the implications were assessed in terms of land use and land values. Based on the analysis, issues and opportunities were identified. In stage 4 the implications of the infrastructure development was identified and strategies were formulated. The chief findings were: the event is not leading to an all-round city development, no strategy made to recover the huge investments made for the event, no rehabilitation strategy for the construction workers and inconvenience caused to the local people during the construction phase. On the contrary, games have also led to speedy infrastructure development, building of sport venues of international standard, addition of hotel rooms and parking spaces which was much required by the city and huge investments made in Zone E leading to its up gradation. Zone E has experienced land use transformations and rise in land values due to the infrastructure development. This rise in land values will call for more intensive and high density development. Based on these issues and implications, strategies have been framed which suggest that these events should aim for an integrated development and should achieve much more than just successfully hosting the event, like, rejuvenation and redevelopment of the blighted areas, etc.