Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Kumbh mela is a temporary mega city built every six and twelve years where seven million people live for fifty-five days. While the city of Allahabad tries to hold on to its crumbling facades, dense roads, and luring gallis, city planners and policy makers envision it only as a ‘pilgrimage town’ and are involved in creating a dominant world-class image of the city due to the shadow cast by this mega event. The study primarily looks at how the everyday mother city of Allahabad interacts with the dynamic city created as a resultant of cyclic events of Mela (Magh Mela, Ardh Kumbh Mela, Kumbh Mela and Maha Kumbh Mela) where certain attributes of dynamicity flow from the ‘temporary’ city to the ‘static’ city. It presents the case of a historic neighbourhood of Kydganj in Allahabad and its loss of socio-spatial patterns due to the change in its building and spatial typologies that once sustained many occupational communities and their diverse cultures. The study argues that the current adopted approach of the city makers is mono-centric and projects-policies enforced are widely affecting the plural nature of the city and its spaces. it discusses the idea of heterogeneity in form, function, space, and circular systems in an urban fabric and challenges the mono-functional city and its linear systems built through the ‘World Class’ aspirations. The study explores the socio-cultural set-backs of such rudimentary approach of the city planners towards a dynamic urban fabric through a spatial lens.