CPR-CSH Workshop on Disparate Trajectories: Comparing Urban Rivers Projects in Lahore and Ahmedabad by Aparna Parikh of Pennsylvania State University.
Date: Tuesday, 27 May 2014
Time: 3.45 p.m.
Venue: Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110 021
The presentation is based on joint work with Nida Rehman. Urban river projects have gained prominence in planning and landscape design, demonstrating disparate concerns, approaches and results: ecological restoration to tourism development, from large-scale redesign to urban acupuncture strategies. Based on original project documents and interviews, we present a detailed comparative account of two urban river initiatives — the work of the River Ravi Commission in Lahore and the ongoing Sabarmati Riverfront Development in Ahmedabad — examining the diverse and contested terrain of urban sustainability practices. The state-driven Sabarmati project aims to revitalize the urban context by a large-scale redevelopment of the water’s edge, the Ravi Commission, formed in 2012, through citizen and legal activism, articulates rampant water pollution as a violation of fundamental human rights and seeks to restore the river’s natural ecology.
Moving outwards from these sites of ‘landing’, we trace temporal and spatial links to divergent trajectories of planning ideas, from globalized images of riverfront public spaces to human rights discourses. Using examples of urban river projects demonstrating a variety of approaches, we highlight different ways in which local aspirations and operations are entangled with transnational discourses on urban sustainability.
Nida Rehman is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University where her teaching covers topics in urban history, architecture theory and design. Her current research projects include a PSU funded study of the dispersal and development of late 19th century garden ideas in urban sites in British India, and an examination of urban river projects in South Asia. She holds a Masters of science in architecture and urbanism from MIT and a professional degree in architecture from Cornell University. She has practiced and taught architecture in the United States, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
Aparna Parikh is a doctoral candidate in the Departments of Geography and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She has completed her B.Arch from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai, and M.Arch from Penn State. She has currently received a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) through the Social Science Research Council, and is a former recipient of the University Graduate Fellowship, Penn State and the Kamla Raheja Foundation Fellowship. Her current research focuses on the urban impact of call centres.
This is the fifty second in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues relating to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society and politics. For further information, please contact: Jayani Bonnerjee at jayani.bonnerjee@csh-delhi.com, Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org or Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr
