Rethinking New Delhi : design studies on the densification of a colonial city

Abstract

New Delhi, the capital of the British Raj in India, forms with the Mughal walled city of Shahjahanabad, the core of a city that has grown tenfold in the forty years since Independence, from 700,000 in 1947, to 7.5 million today. Tremendous disparities characterize this core comprising of what was the 'native city' and the 'colonial city'. The foremost of these is that of density, which is about 350 persons per acre in Shahjahanabad compared to 20 to 25 persons per acre in colonial Delhi. This thesis questions the validity of this bipolarity and the continued existence of a suburban environment in the heart of the city through a series of design studies on the densification of the colonial city. It deals with urban form and its implications. While the stated goal of the Master Plan has been to achieve a more equitable distribution of densities in this core, the reasons for densification, who it is to benefit, and its formal expression as presented in urban design proposals for the area, are often contradictory. The thesis demonstrates an alternative approach that attempts to address these issues within the scope of a purely formal study. It draws on precedents of urban form that already exist in the context of Delhi : that of Shahjahanabad and the colonial city which contains within its suburban environment, traces of another urban tradition.