Students: Daniel Krucker, Florian Rödl
Location: Group work in Kolkata
Date: November, 2008
Type: Research project, student work, Rajarhat - Kolkata New Town

Background
Kolkata is one of the most densely populated metropolis in the world. It’s population is now exceeding 15 million people, making it one of the largest cities worldwide, and due to natural growth and rural-urban migration, it is still growing. Even if the alarming rate of growth of the 1970s has long receded, Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) still adds approximately 300.000 inhabitants to its population annually. Furthermore a growing middle class is aspiring larger apartments and a level of housing quality that cannot be met by the somewhat dilapidated housing stock in the city center. Hence, processes of suburbanization and the foundation of new satellite cities are very pronounced.

Themes
Rajarhat – also called ‘Kolkata New Town’ – currently being planned and constructed in the eastern edges of the city is one of the largest and fastest growing planned city in contemporary India. Like a number of other similar development schemes on the subcontinent, it is meant to house an uprising and service-sector based middle class or upper-middle class population offering all amenities of working, housing, shopping, recreation, culture and information within its confines. The site and location of the satellite city were defined in a peculiar urbanistic method of elimination or principle of exclusion: it was the single largest piece of land east of the core city that was uninhabited, its expanse exactly defined by the location of bordering villages and protected nature areas. It lies to the east of Salt Lake City, the ‘Calcutta New Town’ of the 1960s, whose popularity has seen a decline in recent years. Rajarhat itself will consist of different elements and subparts such as office parts, residential tower blocks, cultural centers and even a section called Rosedale, that markets itself as a city ‘built by non-resident Indians for non-resident Indians’.

Project
What are the ideas behind Rajarhat? How does it compare to other similar development projects in India and globally? Does it have a masterplan? What are the different entities of the satellite city? Does it threaten to become just another hyped urban extension project which is doomed to degenerate into lifeless gated communities, or is there a potential for a new kind of urbanism and a different kind of quality to emerge? How does it compare to Salt Lake City? What is the environmental impact of New Kolkata? How does it integrate into
its surroundings and into a local ‘biosphere’?