How cities are planned and grow

Where

Larkana district, Sindh, Pakistan

When

Built about 2500 BCE

Who

The Harappan (Indus Valley) Civilisation

Made with

Mainly fired brick

Mohenjo-daro was one of the largest Harappan cities. It had two parts: a raised citadel on a high mound and a larger lower town where most people lived. Streets crossed at right angles in a grid, and houses had bathrooms whose waste water ran into covered brick drains along the streets. On the citadel stands the Great Bath (pictured), about 12 metres long, 7 metres wide and 2.4 metres deep, made watertight with tightly fitted bricks and a layer of bitumen (natural tar). It was probably used for ritual bathing. Mohenjo-daro has been a World Heritage Site since 1980.

Where

Khadir Bet island, Rann of Kutch, Gujarat

When

About 3000 to 1500 BCE

Who

The Harappan Civilisation

Made with

Stone and mud brick

Dholavira stands on an island in the salt desert of Kutch, where rain is scarce. Its builders caught the water of two seasonal streams, the Mansar and the Manhar, with dams and channels, and stored it in large stone reservoirs (pictured) inside the city walls. Unlike Mohenjo-daro, the city was laid out in three parts from the start: a citadel, a middle town and a lower town. A large signboard of ten Harappan signs was also found near its northern gate. It became a World Heritage Site in 2021.

Where

Rajasthan

When

Founded in 1727

Who

Founded by Sawai Jai Singh II; planned by Vidyadhar Bhattacharya

Jai Singh II moved his capital down from the hill fort of Amer to the plain, partly because Amer was crowded and short of water. His planner, Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, a Bengali scholar, followed the old Indian building texts (the Vastu and Shilpa Shastras). He laid the city out as a grid of nine squares, three by three. A hill blocked one corner, so that square was moved to the east, and two central squares were joined for the City Palace. Wide straight main streets divide the squares, with matching shopfronts along them and large public squares, called chaupars, where they cross. The walled city has been a World Heritage Site since 2019.

Where

Delhi

When

Announced 1911; opened in 1931

Who

Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, British architects

At the Delhi Durbar of 1911, King George V announced that the capital of British India would move from Calcutta to Delhi. A new city was built south of the old one and opened on 13 February 1931. Its heart is a grand straight avenue, once Kingsway, then Rajpath, and renamed Kartavya Path in 2022 (pictured). It runs from the Viceroy's House on Raisina Hill, now Rashtrapati Bhavan, past India Gate. Around it lie wide tree-lined roads meeting at roundabouts, with large bungalows in big gardens.

Where

Capital of both Punjab and Haryana

When

Planned from 1950; built in the 1950s and 1960s

Who

Le Corbusier, after a first plan by Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki

After Partition in 1947, Punjab lost its capital, Lahore, so India built a new one. Le Corbusier divided the city into sectors, rectangles of about 800 metres by 1,200 metres. Each sector was meant to be a small neighbourhood with its own shops, school and green space, so that daily needs were within about a ten-minute walk, while fast roads run between the sectors. Sector 17 is the city centre, and there is no Sector 13, which was left out as unlucky. Its Capitol Complex is a World Heritage Site; the modern Indian architecture note covers the buildings.

Where

Near Puducherry, Tamil Nadu

When

Founded on 28 February 1968

Who

Founded by Mirra Alfassa, "the Mother"; designed by the French architect Roger Anger

Auroville was started as an experimental "universal township" where people from every country could live together. At its opening ceremony, delegates from 124 nations attended. Roger Anger's Galaxy plan places the Matrimandir (pictured), a golden meditation building, at the centre, with zones curving out from it like the arms of a spiral galaxy. The town has also become a testing ground for building with earth and for green technology.

Where

United States

When

1791

Who

Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French-born engineer

George Washington asked L'Enfant to plan the new capital of the United States. He drew a grid of streets and laid wide diagonal avenues across it, linking important places such as the Capitol and the President's House, with open squares where the avenues meet. A long open green, now the National Mall, runs from the Capitol. His plan later inspired New Delhi, Canberra and Brasília.

Where

Paris, France

When

1853 to 1870

Who

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, for Emperor Napoleon III

In the 1850s Paris was a maze of narrow, dirty medieval lanes. Napoleon III put Haussmann in charge of rebuilding it. He cut long, wide, straight boulevards through old neighbourhoods, lined them with apartment blocks of matching height and style, and added parks, fountains and a huge new system of sewers. At the Place de l'Étoile ("square of the star", pictured), twelve avenues meet around the Arc de Triomphe. Many people lost their homes to the works, and Haussmann was dismissed in 1870.

Where

Barcelona, Spain

When

Plan of 1860

Who

Ildefons Cerdà, civil engineer

When Barcelona pulled down its old city walls, Cerdà planned the extension, the Eixample ("enlargement" in Catalan). It is a vast grid of identical square blocks whose corners are cut off, so every crossing opens into a small eight-sided square with more light, air and room to turn. Cerdà wanted gardens inside each block and markets, schools and hospitals spread evenly; later builders filled in most of the gardens. He also wrote one of the first books on city planning (1867), and gave the Spanish language its word for it, urbanización.

Where

England

When

Book published 1898; renamed Garden Cities of To-morrow in 1902

Who

Ebenezer Howard

Industrial cities were crowded and dirty; villages were healthy but had few jobs. In his 1898 book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Howard proposed a third choice, the Garden City: a town of limited size, about 32,000 people in his diagram (pictured), with homes, factories and a central park, ringed by a green belt of farmland that stops it from spreading. When a garden city is full, a new one is started nearby. Letchworth and Welwyn in England were built on his ideas, and his thinking shaped New Delhi's and Chandigarh's green avenues.

Where

Australia

When

Design competition won in 1912; Parliament moved there in 1927

Who

Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, American architects

Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be Australia's capital, so a new city was built between them. An American husband and wife, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, won the international design competition in 1912; Marion's beautiful drawings helped win it. Their plan uses the hills and a large central lake, now Lake Burley Griffin (pictured), with long straight axes linking the main buildings and the landscape.

Where

Central Brazil

When

Planned from 1957; inaugurated 21 April 1960

Who

Lúcio Costa (plan) and Oscar Niemeyer (buildings), for President Juscelino Kubitschek

Brazil moved its capital from Rio de Janeiro on the coast to the empty centre of the country, to spread growth inland. Lúcio Costa's plan is shaped like an aeroplane or a bird. The body is the Monumental Axis (pictured), a huge avenue with government buildings, and the long curved wings hold housing blocks called superquadras. At the nose, the three branches of government face each other in the Square of the Three Powers. Oscar Niemeyer designed its famous white curving buildings. Critics say it was planned for cars, not for people on foot.

Where

Ahmedabad, Gujarat

When

Opened 14 October 2009

Who

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, with CEPT University as planner

A bus rapid transit system (BRTS) gives buses their own lanes, usually in the middle of the road, with stations where people board at the level of the bus floor, like a metro on wheels. Janmarg ("people's way") was planned with CEPT University in Ahmedabad and won the international Sustainable Transport Award for 2010. Buses in their own lane avoid the traffic jam beside them.

Where

New York, later Toronto

When

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961

Who

Jane Jacobs, American-Canadian writer and activist (1916 to 2006)

In the 1950s, planners in American cities were knocking down old neighbourhoods for highways and tall housing blocks. Jacobs, a writer who lived in Greenwich Village in New York, argued that they were destroying what makes a city work: busy streets with shops and homes mixed together, short blocks, old and new buildings side by side, and neighbours who keep an eye on the street. She led the fight that stopped a planned expressway through Lower Manhattan.

Where

Scotland and India

When

In India from 1914 to the 1920s

Who

Patrick Geddes, Scottish biologist and town planner

Geddes believed a planner must first study a place carefully, its people, work, history and water, before changing it. He called this the survey before plan. Invited to India in 1914, he wrote about 50 reports on Indian towns, including Indore and Lucknow. Instead of clearing whole old neighbourhoods, as colonial officials often did, he suggested conservative surgery: removing only the worst buildings, opening small spaces and restoring old tanks and wells, while keeping the life of the area.