City Beautiful Chandigarh

Chandigarh is a city and a union territory in India that serves as the capital of the two neighboring states of Haryana and Punjab. The city is unique in that it is not a part of either of the two states but is governed directly by the Union Government, which administers all such territories in the country.

Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the north, the west and the south, and to the state of Haryana to the east. It is considered to be a part of the Chandigarh capital region or Greater Chandigarh, which includes Chandigarh, and the city of Panchkula (in Haryana) and cities of Kharar, Kurali, Mohali, Zirakpur (in Punjab). It is located 260 km (162 miles) north of New Delhi, 229 km (143 miles) southeast of Amritsar and just 116 km (72 miles) southwest of Shimla.

It was one of the early planned cities in post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, which transformed from earlier plans created by the Polish architect Maciej Nowicki and the American planner Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city, were designed by the Chandigarh Capital Project Team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. In 2015, an article published by BBC named Chandigarh as one of the perfect cities of the world in terms of architecture, cultural growth and modernization.

Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex was in July 2016 declared by UNESCO as World Heritage at the 40th session of World Heritage Conference held in Istanbul. UNESCO inscription was under "The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier an outstanding contribution to the Modern Movement". The Capitol Complex buildings include the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Punjab and Haryana Secretariat and Punjab and Haryana Assembly along with monuments Open hand, Martyrs Memorial, Geometric Hill and Tower of Shadow.

The city has one of the highest per capita income in the country. The city was reported to be one of the cleanest in India based on a national government study. The union territory also heads the list of Indian states and territories according to Human Development Index. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics, ranked it as the happiest city in India over the happiness index. The metropolitan area of Chandigarh–Mohali–Panchkula collectively forms a Tri-city, with a combined population of over 2 million.

Early history

The city has a prehistoric past. Due to the presence of a lake, the area has fossil remains with imprints of a large variety of aquatic plants and animals, and amphibian life, which were supported by that environment. As it was a part of the Punjab region, it had many rivers nearby where the ancient and primitive settling of humans began. So, about 8000 years ago, the area was also known to be a home to the Harappans.

Modern history

A map of the British Punjab province in 1909. During the Partition of India along the Radcliffe Line, the capital of the Punjab Province, Lahore, fell into West Punjab, Pakistan. The necessity to have a new capital for East Punjab in India then, led to the development of Chandigarh.

Chandigarh was the dream city of India's first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru. After the partition of India in 1947, the former British province of Punjab was split between (mostly Sikhs) East Punjab in India and (mostly Muslim) West Punjab in Pakistan. The Indian Punjab required a new capital city to replace Lahore, which became part of Pakistan during the partition. Therefore, an American planner and architect Albert Mayer was tasked to design a new city called "Chandigarh" in 1949. The government carved out Chandigarh of nearly 50 Pwadhi speaking villages of the then state of East Punjab, India. Shimla was the temporary capital of East Punjab until Chandigarh was completed in 1960.

Albert Mayer, during his work on the development and planning of the new capital city of Chandigarh, developed a superblock-based city threaded with green spaces which emphasized cellular neighborhoods and traffic segregation. His site plan used natural characteristics, using its gentle grade to promote drainage and rivers to orient the plan. Mayer discontinued his work on Chandigarh after developing a master plan for the city when his architect-partner Matthew Nowicki died in a plane crash in 1950. Government officials recruited Le Corbusier to succeed Mayer and Nowicki, who enlisted many elements of Mayer's original plan without attributing them to him.

Le Corbusier designed many administration buildings, including the High Court, the Palace of Assembly and the Secretariat Building. Le Corbusier also designed the general layout of the city, dividing it into sectors. Chandigarh hosts the largest of Le Corbusier's many Open Hand sculptures, standing 26 metres high. The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte)is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." It represents what Le Corbusier called the "Second Machine Age". Two of the six monuments planned in the Capitol Complex which has the High Court, the Assembly and the Secretariat, remain incomplete. These include Geometric Hill and Martyrs Memorial; drawings were made, and they were begun in 1956, but they were never completed.

On 1 November 1966, the newly formed state of Haryana was carved out of the eastern portion of East Punjab, in order to create a new state for the majority Haryanvi-speaking people in that portion, while the western portion of East Punjab retained a mostly Punjabi-speaking majority and was renamed as Punjab. Chandigarh was located on the border of both states and the states moved to incorporate the city into their respective territories. However, the city of Chandigarh was declared a union territory to serve as capital of both states.

As of 2016, many historical villages in Chandigarh are still inhabited within the modern blocks of sectors including Burail and Attawa, while there are a number of non-sectoral villages that lie on the outskirts of the city. These villages were a part of the pre-Chandigarh era.