Patil Mrudula Vijay

4669-6

Urban spaces are the diverse and complex habitats and are spaces with divergent ideas, lifestyles, organized chaos and contestations over spaces and resources. ‘Understanding the City’ studio focused on identifying the correlation between various aspects of planning at hand with real life situations, study of inter-relations of physical social and cultural characteristics in the given context. As the part of 1st year foundation studio, the precinct of 1 Sq.km area of ‘Chandkheda has been studied. It is a neighborhood in the North of the metropolitan city of Ahmedabad and lies west to Sabarmati River. The ‘Urban village (Gamtal) and highway (Mehsana road)’ form the oldest part of the precinct. The highway connects major cities like Gandhinagar, Kalol, Sanand and Ahmedabad which gave rise to the commercial development along the road and residential development in the internal part of the precinct. The road being the key determinant for the transformation of the precinct, the study initiated from physical characteristics of road network followed by the chronology of connecting parameters of infrastructure which influenced land use, which is further related to the building typology, population density, livelihood and quality of life. Apart from the overall analysis, gamtal being the core and organically emerged part of Chandkheda have been focused on throughout the portfolio by comparing the physical characteristics with other areas like Gujarat housing board colony, apartments and other private societies in the precinct. The study played an important role in understanding, comparing and analyzing the various factors responsible for the growth, development and economy of the city. It broadened the vision and added to the foundational knowledge thus understanding the vital aspects of urban planning like housing, infrastructure, transportation, economy and livelihood etc.