Essay Kinetic City

Architect and pedagogue Rahul Mehrotra dwells upon how by restructuring the city-making process, the 'Kinetic' and 'Static' Cities can be intertwined beyond the physical and can engage the inhabitants of the city

- Rahul Mehrotra

Cities in India are characterised by physical and visual contradictions that coalesce in a landscape of incredible pluralism. These cities are anticipated to be the largest urban conglomerates in the twenty-first century. Historically, particularly during the period of British colonisation, the different worlds – whether economic, social or cultural – of these cities occupied different spaces and operated under different rules – the aim being to maximise control and minimise conflict between these opposing worlds. (King 1976) However, today these worlds share the same space, but understand and use it differently. i

Massive waves of distress rural migration during the latter half of the 1900s triggered the convergence of these worlds into a singular, but multifaceted entity. This, coupled with the inadequate supply of urban land and the lack of the creation of new urban centers, resulted in extremely high densities in existing cities. Furthermore, with the emergence of a postindustrial, service-based economy, the intertwining of these worlds within the same space is even greater ii (Prasad 2005). In this post-industrial scenario, cities in India have become critical sites for negotiation between elite and subaltern cultures. The new relationships between social classes in a postindustrial economy are quite different from those that existed in state-controlled economies (Chatterjee 2003). The fragmentation of service and production locations has resulted in a new, bazaar-like urbanism, which has woven its presence through the entire urban landscape.iii