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Is Chandigarh a model city?

I’ve followed Himanshu Burte’s writing for a while and had the opportunity to meet and talk to him in 2009 at the Indian Architecture conference at the New School in NYC.

He poses a very valid question about Chandigarh, India’s first planned city in the Modern era. As an architect I have always been enamoured by the city and on the few visits there, have found it to be so very different from most Indian cities. However that is the architect in me, that thinks so.

Many a resident of the city lament about the things that dont work and how the planning is just so alien.

Himanshu builds up a really good arguement for the city.

Is Chandigarh a model city?

Himanshu Burte / New Delhi 

The first early example of what we can call a “rational” city, Chandigarh can be either loved or hated. In the first of a series of articles on architecture and architects that have, for better or worse, influenced the way Indian cities look and behave, Himanshu Burte critically examines Corbusier’s Chandigarh