Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi _ RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International

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Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi

Ripin Kalra highlights new opportunities for Delhis favourite centre as aresult of anew mass-transit system

Connaught Place (CP) built and inaugurated in the 1930s, started bustling as the

grand marketplace of British New Delhi and later served remarkably well as the pre-eminent shopping and tourist centre of a national capital city. More recently, itsmuch loved but rigid urban form has also been one of its biggest limitations in thenew global economy. CP highlights several issues in the transformation of anemblematic urban place and the management of its continued relevance to the city.

Marketplace for an imperial city, 1930s

ConnaughtPlace was conceived as a market-place for imperial New Delhi. Sir EdwinLutyens, when drawing up the p lans for British New Delhi (circa 1915) meant thenew city to lie southwest of the walled cit y of Shahjahanabad. In the true sprit ofcolonial rule, the interface between this new imperial city and the older nativesettlement wa s intended to be a market, where Lutyens imagined the Indiantraders would invest in a grand shoppingcentre for the residents ofShahjahanabad and New Delhi. And so the idea of a market at D-circle was born.This might also have been a security device. The British were housed south ofKingsway (now Rajpath) and so the market and the spacious bungalows of theIndians lay between them and the crowded Shahjahanabad, at a safe distancefrom political meetings and demonstrations.

The market itself gets the name Connaught Place in honour of the Duke ofConnaught who visited Delhi in 1921. By this time, RT Russe l, chief architect in thecentral public works department was ready with the concentric design. The plans

Colonnade at Connaught Place

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for New Delhi had several critics: first, the imperial city was be ing built in a periodwhen the first world war had placed severe restrictions on British resources andsuch a city plan was seen as an extravagance. Social planners such as PatrickGeddes suggested the option of carefully redeveloping the walled city as far moresymbolic and beneficial than imposing a new capital at tremendous expense.However, the symbolic appeal of the designs was irresistible and Connaught Placewas eventually financed primarily through the investments of local traders in shopsand apartments.

In its form, CP is like a large doughnut with a garden in the centre. The outer and

inner faces of the doughnut are the spacious colonnaded walkways or verandas,which give CP its unique identity. The concentric buildings are reached by the inner,outer and middle circles and eight roads radiating out from the concentricarrangements. One of the radial roads, Parliament Street connected CP and theParliament house and is laid along a symbolic vista aligning with the Jama Masjid(Mosque) in the walled city.

Prior to 1947 CP was the shopping centre for Europeans and rich Indians. Juniorclerks and officials of Indian origin shopped a t smaller satellite markets such as Goleand Bengali. CPs mixed-use arrangement was apartments on the upper floors andretail on the ground floors. The apartments were entered through the middle circleflanked by patches of gardens and the shops opened into the verandas in theouter and inner circles. The cinema at the Rega l Building and a number of cafs andtea rooms we re popular social venues.

Centre for a capital city, 1947

After 1947 New Delhi became the capital of independent India. This brought intoDelhi a scaled up central government, limited influx of internationa l businesses(India was socialist and only partially open to foreign traders), and diplomaticmissions. At the same time there was a huge influx of people forced to relocate toDelhi after the Indo-Pakistan partition. They were given she lter in temporary campsand gradually housed in resettlement colonies around the city. Delhis populationgrew rapidly during this period and its ethnic profile changed.

Connaught Place remained at the heart of this growth as it was already a popularshopping centre, attractive for its prestigious shops and socialising venues. It layadjacent to the hub of government activity so the verandas were also ideal forinformal traders to set up their livelihoods for passing customers. Many of themwere subsequently organised into small markets along and in-between the radialroads as preserving the character of CP became an important concern for the NewDelhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).

Transformation

Sketch Plan of Connaught Place1 Regal Building2 Park Hotel3 NDMC4 DLF Building5 LIC Building6 Imperial Hotel7 STC Building8 Green, now site for metrostation

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Endpiece
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In the four decades after 1947, space has always been in high demand in andaround Connaught Place for both small traders and businesses, as w ell as nationaland international brands or services wanting to set-up their flagshipestablishments. In no specific order, space has literally been squeezed and carvedout of a very tight urban form under a multitude of ownerships and sometimesinformal agreements:

apartments on upper floor we re converted into space forbusinesses

high rise office buildings replaced bungalow s along radialroads

a formal plan by NDMC created extra retail space and parkingunder the central green area

office and business space wa s developed in areas adjacent to CP

many small kiosks were opened in corners and side-lanes.

Connaught Place was designed at a time when private motor vehicles wereuncommon. Most people cycled if they had to go a distance. By the late 1970s Delhi

already had one of the highest rates of growth in private vehicle ownerships in thewhole country (today Delhi has more vehicles than Mumbai, Calcutta and Madrasput together) Parking space and roads were increasingly packed by this time,already resulting in calls and plans for CP to be greener, pedestrian-only and madevehicle free. Needless to say, this was heavily opposed by the traders w ho couldntsee the Delhi shoppers giving up their private vehicles particularly with risingcompetition from retail centres in other parts of the city such as Ajmal Khan Road,Rajndra Place, South Extension, INA Market, Greater Kailash and Jwala Heri.

Since 1962, the masterplan for Delhi was also more concerned with decentralisingDelhi and taking the focus of office and retail space away from CP. This strategyworked but no t as planned because district centres were hardly the a ttractive,established or socially active spaces to provide an alternative to the charm of goingto CP. In fact, a majority of district centres failed to sell as the re was not so muchinterest among traders and businesses to invest in expensive space that was be ingprovided a t a slow and unreliable pace. Instead, a large number of businesseswere set up within residential areas and urban villages scattered across Delhi.

The growth and transformation in Connaught Place were mixed, partly regulatedand partly spontaneous, a process mostly undocumented. In the meantime NDMCbecame more concerned with traffic and parking issues. A number of ways weredevised to ease the jams such as regularisation of parking, pedestrian-only areasand restricted traffic flows. A number of these plans were never implemented whileothers performed well. In the 80s traffic circling CP was made one-way to reducecongestion when getting on to the radial roads. This was well enforced and became

Informal growth of BarakhambaRoad

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a popular move.

The predominant means of travel to work in and around CP continued to be privatevehicles or chartered buses. Public transport was unreliable and overcrowded, anddiscouraged the locals from travelling frequently and spontaneously to the centre,particularly during business hours. The attraction of local markets around Delhi wasa further reason for many people to stay away from the centre.

Liberalisation and global businesses

The era of liberalisation for the Indian economy started in the early 1990s.Connaught Place e ntered it w ith a name change . Officially since then, it is calledRajiv Chowk after the prime-minister Rajiv Gandhi who was t ragically as sassinated.The physical symbol of this era for CP is the Jeevan Bharati Building which wascompleted in the early 1990s and broke away from the low-rise circular colonnadedform. Suddenly the psychological barrier that CPs inner circle had to retain its lowrise form was broken. There was a lot of criticism for this design but space wasrapidly taken up by multinationals. Across the street a new block - DLF Plaza - wasbuilt on Pa rliament Street and rap idly let to British Airways, ABN-AMRO bank andother multinationals. Park Hotel and Imperial Hotel have also undergone substantialand expensive refurbishments to prepare for the potential demand. The cottageemporium previously sitting in an army barracks was housed in the STC building on

Janpath. Private companies developed a few new multi-storey structures alongKasturba Gandhi Marg and Barakhamba Road and these were let out tomultinationals.

However, by the mid-1990s real-estate agencies started to highlight theadvantages for multinationals to make base outside CP and particularly on sites inadjacent states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh where plenty of space wasavailable in close proximity to both the city of Delhi and the international airport.These sites offered ready, more flexible and larger business spaces at lower coststhan CP, more possibilities for residential and social space for their employees andproximity to several othe r multinationals. By comparison, redevelopment in CP wascomplicated by multiple ownerships, ongoing tenancies, high costs and morerestrictive space. Towards the end of the 90s, prominent multinationals such as

Indian Oil Corporat ion, Samsung, Smith Klien Beechham, Banque Paribas and INGmoved out of CP towards Southern Delhi and Gurgaon.

The public access and transport situation to Gurgaon is worse than CP but thebusinesses have gone around this problem by employing large fleets of private carsto shift staff and goods. New buildings have made provision to accommodateparking at a large scale. CP has thus found itself fairly restricted to attract a fairshare of business and investment that has come in since 1990s. At the same timethere were no plans to improve CPs competitiveness through comprehensiveredevelopment.

Recent growth in Gargaon
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Bangkok: Mass Transit to the Rescue up Bahla Fort and Oasis, Oman

The second wind: better access for CP

Today a new development provides an opportunity for CP to reconnect with thecity. By July 2005 the new metro rail will make CP more accessible at the city scaleby reconnecting it to key hubs in North Delhi such as the Delhi University, CentralSecretariat and Rohini (largest residential development in Asia), and by 2010 toSouthern Delhi and the airport. Despite the wide-spread developments taking placein the city, no reta il or leisure development in Delhi can compare w ith the tota lity ofthe CP experience. In that sense its status as a social hub is se cure and there is atremendous opportunity to draw back some crowds previously discouraged by

difficult access.

New Delhi is now preparing for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and bidding forthe Asian Games in 2012. The NDMC has also p lanned improvement of thestructures and careful landscaping to improve the physical aspect of CP.Development of the businesses is piecemeal but is gathering pace. Since 2000, theactivity by private developers and renewed enthusiasm of governments to enforcebuilding regulations have ensured that both new and appropriate e xisting spacehave been released for occupancy and development. A number of smaller businessand newer multinationals have taken advantage of the resulting price corrections totake-up space within CP.

However, the pressure on local authorities to improve the competitiveness of CPwill only be released through a comprehensive scheme. This should be a priority

and will ensure that CP meets its potential in attracting international business andinvestment without losing its well-known, well-loved appeal for the people of Delhi.

Ripin Kalra, research fellow a t the Max Locke Centre, University of Westminster

New metro station at ConnaughtPlace

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