# New Delhi Looks to Skyscraper Living



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Clogged New Delhi forces skyline higher *
13 March 2007
International Herald Tribune

Late morning in the Pahar Ganj neighborhood, and the narrow lanes heave with movement. Cross-legged on the pavement, four men bind books in red leather; across the road a man sells pomegranates and fresh green coconuts; the woman next door deals in glass marbles and wooden spinning tops; nearby, gulab jamuns - balls of dough soaked in syrup - are frying in a vast vat of boiling oil. 

It is a scene much-photographed by backpackers to India, who stay in Pahar Ganj's cheap hotels, a stone's throw from the New Delhi railroad station at the heart of the capital. But the city authorities view this thronging, vibrant stretch of land as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the city. 

A new government-vision document for the capital, the Delhi Master Plan, proposes that the area be demolished and be replaced by high-rise apartment blocks. 

Delhi is bursting and the only way is up. If Baron Haussmann's plan for transforming Paris lay in replacing crowded lanes with wide, unbarricadable boulevards, India's minister of state for urban development, Ajay Maken, dreams of creating new space to house the city's exploding population by growing vertically. 

His Master Plan 2021, which took effect last month, sets out a recipe for transforming India's capital into a "world-class city," guided by three priorities: obliterating the slums, taming the traffic and importing a Manhattan skyline. 

On the surface, this dense 200-page document, filled with annexations on sewage systems and arterial road routes, is a dry piece of officialese. But beneath the small print, it is a brave attempt to tackle an urgent problem: How do you transform a chaotic, traffic-choked, churning city into a "global metropolis" worthy of representing India's ambitions to become the next Asian superpower? 

As it is, Delhi is a planner's nightmare. Go beyond the carefully laid-out, green showpiece terrain of New Delhi - home to the prime minister, the city's elite and the best hotels - and there is architectural anarchy. 

The government estimates that about 60 percent of the city's 15 million inhabitants live in homes that are illegal - in slums, in unauthorized developments or in unplanned and unsafe buildings. 

Because these areas do not officially exist, they have no safe water supply, no legal electricity system and no proper sewers. Resourceful residents have made do: artfully siphoning water from the mains, risking their lives to sling wires onto nearby electricity pylons to steal power. The city's central water and power supplies are barely able to cope with this extra, invisible demand, while extended power outages occur daily. 

Since these were unplanned settlements, no good roads were ever built for them. Now their inhabitants, who are growing rapidly richer with India's economic boom, are trading in their bicycles for motorbikes, or upgrading their motorbikes for cars. Traffic in the capital is growing thicker and more perilous. 

The Ministry of Urban Development has concluded that if 60 percent of the people in the city are living outside of the law, then the problem lies with the law itself. With a stroke of a pen, the new plan legalizes the homes of about three-and-a-half million people who have until now lived in fear of seeing their homes knocked down. Areas deemed dangerous will be redeveloped and the city's two million slum dwellers will be rehoused. 

"To be a world-class city we need to have good quality housing," Maken said in an interview in his office in an upmarket part of Delhi where power cuts are rare and the water supply is good. Since the 1950s, successive governments have restricted housing construction to one state body, the Delhi Development Authority. But this organization failed to keep pace with spiraling demand, and as a result, newcomers to the city have been forced to build for themselves illegally. 

Maken has concluded that the state-backed system has proved disastrous, and the new plan (the third drawn up for the city since 1962) allows private developers into the housing market for the first time. 

To give these developers an incentive, the plan abolishes restrictions on tall construction, in all but a few historical areas. Building upward is a radical solution for a city where height restrictions keep most buildings at tree level. But, since the government has been unable to stop the annual arrival of about half- a-million migrants driven by rural poverty, it now says radical action is necessary. By 2021 the capital's population is forecast to rise to 23 million, and the masses must be housed somehow. 

"We will have more open spaces and more high-rise buildings," Maken said. "The skyline of the city will change. People will no longer be forced to live in narrow lanes in subhuman conditions. You can't convert the whole of Delhi into Manhattan; but some parts will go that way." 

Delhi has no alternative, he said. 

Although Pahar Ganj was originally a legal development, rampant ad hoc construction has turned it into a labyrinthine mess. Developers will now be able to approach residents, who mostly live in three-story buildings, with a plan to provide them with an equal- sized apartment in a 15-story block and a cash bonus of, say, 2,500,000 rupees, or $56,500. The plan stipulates that 35 percent of the housing would have to be developed for poor residents, and green space would be left between the tall buildings. Unsurprisingly, the plan is controversial. K.T. Ravindran, dean of the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, warned that India was not culturally suited to the high-rise. 

"You'll get whole communities who don't look each other in the eye, where the only human contact is when they yell at the person in the next car," he said. Serving tea from his pavement tea stall, Surjit Singh Bedi, 60, said he had no sentimental attachment to the streets of Pahar Ganj that have been his home for the past 55 years. 

"What's to like?" he asked, gesturing toward the tilting buildings, illegally and inexpertly extended and re-extended on their original base.


----------



## Don Omar (Aug 10, 2006)

This will be interesting to watch. I would hope that they would not just slash and burn the communities for grand developments, but rather a mixing in tall building with the communities (like São Paulo). 
How developing nation's cities transform their existing and future slums into habitable places will be one of the defining tests for the 21st century. If Delhi gets it right I am sure that cities like Lagos, Dhaka, Karachi, and the rest of the developing world will follow suit.


----------



## DarkLite (Dec 31, 2004)

*hmm we've read something about slums in Mumbai recently being turned into apartments. I think this growth and rise of apartments thing can get out of control. Pretty soon, prices could elevate for real estate and not many people will be able to afford moving in to a condo. Also, the skyscrapers being built must have adequate infrastructure to meet the demands, which for a city like New Delhi, is limited.*


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Going back to Mumbai, there are still quite a large swath of slums in the city. Even if a lot of them are razed and redeveloped into public housing highrises, the train sytem might not even be able to handle the increased densities. Infrastructure must be boosted first before they think of intensifying density.


----------



## Don Omar (Aug 10, 2006)

do you think traditional slums should be built up and improve as the community's standard of living rises or should these communities be bulldozed for planned development?


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Don Omar said:


> do you think traditional slums should be built up and improve as the community's standard of living rises or should these communities be bulldozed for planned development?


The key is to find a decent place for the lower classes to live in. Bulldozing these slums will just move the poor around, and force them into more dense and unhygenic conditions elsewhere. By reducing the income gap and lifting the poor out of poverty, they can afford to buy the new homes and drive redevelopment.


----------



## Don Omar (Aug 10, 2006)

i mean what is wrong with the slums as communities. I know, the really low standard of living, lack of access to public services and illegal use of basic services like water and electricity.
what is wrong with that model of development? Their current state is unacceptable to humanity, but since no one is really doing anything about it any.
what comes to my mind is São Paulo and Bogotá in which there are entire neighborhoods that were once slums which slowly self improved as the income level rose. Will current slum dwellers actually leave their homes and communities when their income level rises.

(ahh Bogotá)


----------



## dysan1 (Dec 12, 2004)

I think a holistic approach is needed and that development of highrises needs to go hand in hand with the rejuvenation of transportation and infrastructure. without it even greater chaos will be created. But with the massive populations indian cities have, they HAVE to go higher and create dense skylines like their south east asian relatives


----------



## Don Omar (Aug 10, 2006)

A Plan to Tame the Architectural Chaos of India’s Capital









_In one neighborhood in New Delhi a girl drew water from a tap in an alley next to a public urinal and a cow eating from a pile of garbage._

By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
Published: April 13, 2007
nytime.com

NEW DELHI, April 12 — It is late morning in the Pahar Ganj neighborhood, a stone’s throw from the New Delhi railway station at the heart of the capital, and the narrow lanes are alive with commerce. But the city authorities view this thronging, vibrant stretch of land as the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the city. 

A new government vision for the capital, the Delhi Master Plan, proposes that the area be demolished and replaced by high-rise apartments to deal with the city’s spiraling and out-of-control growth.

By 2021 the city’s population is expected to rise to 23 million from 15 million today. If Baron Haussmann’s plan for transforming Paris lay in replacing crowded lanes with wide, unbarricadable boulevards, India’s minister of state for urban development, Ajay Maken, dreams of creating space to house the exploding population by growing vertically.

His Master Plan 2021, which took effect in February, is a brave attempt to tackle an urgent problem: how do you transform a chaotic, traffic-choked, churning city into a “global metropolis” worthy of representing India’s ambitions to become the next Asian superpower? The answer boils down to three guiding principles: obliterating the slums, taming the traffic and importing a Manhattan-like skyline.

As it is, Delhi is a planner’s nightmare. Go beyond the carefully laid-out, green showpiece terrain of New Delhi — an area within the metropolis of Delhi that is home to the nation’s government, the city’s elite and the best hotels — and there is architectural anarchy.

The government estimates that 60 percent of the city’s inhabitants live in homes that are illegal — in slums, in unauthorized developments or in unplanned and unsafe buildings.

Because these areas do not officially exist, they have no safe water supply, no legal electricity system and no proper sewers. Resourceful residents have made do: artfully siphoning water from the mains, risking their lives to sling wires onto electricity pylons to steal power.

The city’s central water and power supplies are barely able to cope with this extra, invisible demand; most areas receive water for just a couple of hours a day, forcing residents to stock up with buckets when they can, while power failures occur daily.

Since these were unplanned settlements, no good roads were ever built for them. Now their inhabitants, who are growing richer with India’s economic boom, are trading in their bicycles for motorbikes, or upgrading their motorbikes for cars. Last year, car sales rose across India by 24 percent. Traffic in the capital is growing thicker and more perilous.

The new plan legalizes the houses of around three and a half million people, who have until now lived in fear of seeing their homes knocked down. Areas deemed dangerous will be redeveloped, and the city’s roughly two million slum dwellers will be rehoused, many of them in the new, tall, developments.

Since the 1950s, successive governments have restricted housing construction to one state body, the Delhi Development Authority. Mr. Maken has said that the state-backed system has proved disastrous, and the new plan (the third drawn up since 1962) allows private developers into the housing market for the first time.

To give these developers an incentive, the plan abolishes restrictions on tall construction, in all but a few historic areas. Building upward is a radical solution for a city where height restrictions keep most buildings at tree level. But since the government has been unable to stop the annual arrival of half a million migrants driven by rural poverty, it now says radical action is necessary.

Under the new plan, developers will be able to approach residents, who mostly live in three-story buildings, with a plan to provide them with an equal-size apartment in a 15-story block and a cash bonus of, say, 2.5 million rupees, or $56,500. The plan stipulates that 35 percent of the housing be developed for poor residents, and that green space be left between the tall buildings.









_Delhi's main streets and bazaars are choked by traffic._

Unsurprisingly, the plan is highly controversial. K. T. Ravindran, dean of the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, has warned that the slum demolition scheme risks following the discredited Paris model of urban planning, where poor communities were relocated into areas that fast became ghettoes.

The author of Delhi’s first Master Plan, Jagmohan, a retired politician who uses only one name, was also scathing, remarking that the proposal would turn Delhi into a world-class city only if one equated high-rise apartment blocks with sophistication. “And what message are you giving by legalizing illegal settlements?” he asked. “You’re saying that anyone who has infringed the law will now stand to gain.”

But Mr. Maken shrugs off these criticisms. “To be a world-class city we need to have good quality housing,” he said in an interview in his office in an upscale part of Delhi where power failures are rare and the water supply is good (although wild monkeys dance on the cars of officials outside, resistant to all campaigns to banish them).

Besides, he said, Delhi has no alternative. “There’s no way that we can remove these millions of people, living in illegal constructions, from Delhi,” he said. “And we shouldn’t do it. They are the people who are working as maids, building the metros, driving the rickshaws. They are essential service providers for the community.”

Serving tea from his pavement tea stall, Surjit Singh Bedi, 60, said he had no sentimental attachment to the streets of Pahar Ganj that had been his home for the past 55 years.

“What’s to like?” he asked, gesturing toward the tilting buildings, illegally and inexpertly extended and re-extended on their original base, and the cobweb of looping electricity wires stretching like a canopy above the street. “If there is electricity, there is no water. If there is water, there is no electricity. The power lines are so dangerous that houses keep catching fire. The traffic is so bad that the houses are burnt out before the fire engines can get here.

“I’ve never been in a tower block, but I’d be willing to sell up and move.”


----------



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Don Omar said:


> i mean what is wrong with the slums as communities. I know, the really low standard of living, lack of access to public services and illegal use of basic services like water and electricity.
> what is wrong with that model of development? Their current state is unacceptable to humanity, but since no one is really doing anything about it any.
> what comes to my mind is São Paulo and Bogotá in which there are entire neighborhoods that were once slums which slowly self improved as the income level rose. Will current slum dwellers actually leave their homes and communities when their income level rises.


But can the slum dwellers have the opportunity to improve their lives, and still accomodate the rural migrants flooding into the cities? Are there enough low-skilled jobs to accomodate them? If there are adequate avenues of wealth generation, then these slums could wipe themselves out in a generation.


----------



## PedroGabriel (Feb 5, 2007)

Don Omar said:


>


 What a slum. Is the guy pissing in the street?



Don Omar said:


>


is this one of its main avenues? 

I guess skyscrapers will become a characteristic of the 3rd world. So we will never get a real scraper.


----------



## Sen (Nov 13, 2004)

^^So New York and Chicago are third-world?


----------



## zachus22 (Dec 4, 2006)

Sen said:


> ^^So New York and Chicago are third-world?


Maybe he meant we're actually starting to see a fairly significant number of skyscrapers pop up in third-world countries...?


----------



## high_flyer (Jan 30, 2003)

Indian cities are not very attractive or well planned, there seems to be no planning regulations, and alot of the buildings are of poor quality. Most of their decent buildings are relics of the British Raj, and some of them are in a bad state now. India has alot of work to do on its cities before it can consider Delhi, Bangalore or Bombay world class....


----------



## Thunderflip (Jul 15, 2003)

India needs a role model city! It really is a serious matter...Mumbai has the talls, New Delhi has the government buildings...India is an emerging 3rd world country that actually has a lot of wealth...i can't believe this!

Urban planning should be taken seriously for the sake of India's economic emerge and power... i hope this would happen soon enough.


----------



## sequoias (Dec 21, 2004)

They got a long way to go.....I hope they clean up the mess there, too.


----------



## CarlosBlueDragon (May 6, 2007)

wooooo... She can brave to see guy pissing in the street!! :runaway:


----------



## nygirl (Jul 14, 2003)

That place looks like it sucks.


----------



## Don Omar (Aug 10, 2006)

oddly it looks sort of like jersey


----------



## zachus22 (Dec 4, 2006)

Don Omar said:


> oddly it looks sort of like jersey


:lol:


----------

