Town Planning in Ancient India c11.24

c11.24

The above leads us to the topic of town extension. The extension of towns has not yet received as much attention from the municipal authorities as it should have. The consequence is that in suburbs history is repeating itself. The same lack of scientific plan and foresight which characterises the uncared-for growth of the modern towns and which has necessitated the inauguration of the various Town Improvement Boards with their demolishing and financially ruinous operations, disrupting the harmony and tranquillity of civic life and carrying havoc to multitudes, runs rampant, even in this scientific age, in the suburbs. No civic architect can be blind to the future possibilities of his town. "The unkempt fringe of derelict houses and rubbish heaps that so frequently surround our modern town" not only detracts from picturesqueness and organic integrity of the city but proves very detrimental to its salubrity. Over and above, such a policy of *laissez faire* with regard to the suburbs makes for financial waste inasmuch the Improvement Trust cannot trim them to proper order without going through its demolishing functions in some measure. Such a state of affairs was well nigh impossible in the towns of ancient India, because there could not grow practically any suburb round them. The peculiar defensive works girding the ancient Indian towns in the shape of walls and ditches precluded the growth of any such clumsy outskirts about them. These walls and ditches, circumscribed sometimes by a girdle of lofty trees, combined to present the town as one isolated entity, entire and beautiful, to an ingoing visitor and contributed to the solidarity of its corporate life.