Excessive Planning in the Urban Future: Obstacles to Urban Utopia The utopian-style planning of the urban future has embraced principle, and abandoned practicality. In order to form utopian cities, the planners of urban areas like Brasília and Delhi proposed detailed urban plans that have mostly ignored market factors in favor of heightened urban regulations. In the case of Brasília, these regulations, designed to further the city’s utopian conception, have actually had the opposite effect. Brasília’s regulations have drawn population centers away from the center city toward outlying areas. (Bertaud 8). Furthermore, in Delhi, planners have saddled migrants with a strict bureaucratic process for immigration to the city. As such, migrants have
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In his article, Delhi's Modernist Dream Proves a Far-fetched Fantasy, David Adler describes that Delhi was created to be an example of urban utopia (Adler). However, the city has never been able to live up to that example. The city has taken a radical approach toward urban planning (by forming a completely new urban system) (Palen 334). Consequently, Delhi has bounded itself to an overly-detailed urban plan from the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) from which the planners have been reluctant to deviate. Thus, as migrants have flooded into the area, they have chosen to establish villages outside the city while they apply, through a lengthy and potentially fruitless process, for a legal title within the city. The planners of Delhi have become so dogmatic about their plans for the city, and who should inhabit it, that they have forsaken reality—half of Delhi’s inhabitants now live in informal settlement (Adler). Ultimately, the concept of a utopia is based on perfection; however, those who plan utopian cities must understand that perfection is unattainable, and that making perfection a necessity for a city (in this instance, population composition and distribution) is self-defeating. If Delhi is to become an urban utopia, its planners must realize that the path to utopia is not a straight line—cities must adapt to the realities of the day in order to grow. Cities can never become utopias if they are not viable locales for economic and residential
In his article, Delhi's Modernist Dream Proves a Far-fetched Fantasy, David Adler describes that Delhi was created to be an example of urban utopia (Adler). However, the city has never been able to live up to that example. The city has taken a radical approach toward urban planning (by forming a completely new urban system) (Palen 334). Consequently, Delhi has bounded itself to an overly-detailed urban plan from the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) from which the planners have been reluctant to deviate. Thus, as migrants have flooded into the area, they have chosen to establish villages outside the city while they apply, through a lengthy and potentially fruitless process, for a legal title within the city. The planners of Delhi have become so dogmatic about their plans for the city, and who should inhabit it, that they have forsaken reality—half of Delhi’s inhabitants now live in informal settlement (Adler). Ultimately, the concept of a utopia is based on perfection; however, those who plan utopian cities must understand that perfection is unattainable, and that making perfection a necessity for a city (in this instance, population composition and distribution) is self-defeating. If Delhi is to become an urban utopia, its planners must realize that the path to utopia is not a straight line—cities must adapt to the realities of the day in order to grow. Cities can never become utopias if they are not viable locales for economic and residential