Reference Text
Time Left10:00
Every
million-plus
city
in
India
boasts
of
a
history
that
spans
500
years
on
an
average.
The
forms
of
the
cities
have
seen
more
than
historians
could
ever
document
fully
or
completely.
Indian
cities
have
witnessed
social
struggles,
changing
governance
systems
and
powers,
disasters,
economic
booms
and
recessions
for
centuries
before
attaining
their
current
shape
and
form.
What
makes
them
different
from
one
another
are
the
embedded
historical
struggles,
the
organic
evolution,
the
vernacular
growth,
the
social
sciences
that
reside
within
the
cities.
In
scenarios
where
urban
spaces
appear
cyclical,
dynamic,
and
alterable,
informed
by
technological
modifications
more
than
historical
changes,
setting
a
prototype
definition
of
‘global
cities’,
the
cities
lose
their
individuality.
What
we
get
in
processes
like
these
are
mass-produced,
factory-made
products
where
one
formula
fits
all.
The
millennial
urban
India
aspires
for
cities
made
up
of
repetitive
patterns
of
grids,
glazed
windows,
and
the
business
consultancy
a
white-collar
workforce,
existing
as
an
island
within
the
local
city,
exhibiting
the
pressures
of
Indian
urbanisation.
A
denial
of
the
existing
urban
paradox
demonstrated
happy,
thriving,
prosperous
spaces
blooming
in
the
most
unsanitary,
inhuman
and
degrading
working
and
living
places.
A
city
without
the
narration
of
its
pressures,
struggles
and
essentially
its
social
sciences
would
be
a
space
but
not
a
place,
wherein
the
beautiful
heterogeneity
of
romanticised
urban
chaos
will
get
reduced
to
the
homogeneity
of
urban
order.
Even
a
set
of
theories
remaining
relevant
only
to
the
social
sciences
and
ignoring
other
governing
aspects
such
as
environment,
resources,
economics
and
technological
developments
would
also
not
be
fully
justified.
If
social
lenses
are
required
to
understand
a
city
or
an
urbanscape
from
a
humane
perspective,
then
other
things
such
as
resources
and
environment
are
equally
relevant
and
are
required
to
keep
the
system
going.
Is
there
then
scope
for
a
model
where
social
sciences
are
formed
as
a
derivative
of
the
scientific
process,
where
both
the
lenses
can
act
interchangeably
rather
than
challenging
the
authenticity
of
one
another?
Every
million-plus
city
in
India
boasts
of
a
history
that
spans
500
years
on
an
average.
The
forms
of
the
cities
have
seen
more
than
historians
could
ever
document
fully
or
completely.
Indian
cities
have
witnessed
social
struggles,
changing
governance
systems
and
powers,
disasters,
economic
booms
and
recessions
for
centuries
before
attaining
their
current
shape
and
form.
What
makes
them
different
from
one
another
are
the
embedded
historical
struggles,
the
organic
evolution,
the
vernacular
growth,
the
social
sciences
that
reside
within
the
cities.
In
scenarios
where
urban
spaces
appear
cyclical,
dynamic,
and
alterable,
informed
by
technological
modifications
more
than
historical
changes,
setting
a
prototype
definition
of
‘global
cities’,
the
cities
lose
their
individuality.
What
we
get
in
processes
like
these
are