Town Planning in Ancient India c15.48

c15.48

The corporate life of modern society being centralised in the city, people, a considerable percentage of them, now a days abandon their villages and settle in the city, some by their own choice, some by force of circumstances. The congestion of modern cities is the result. A narrow conception of town and town-planning has usurped every square inch of land and denuded the city of all trees or tanks, to make room for human habitations. The serried phalanx of cloud-high chimneys—the lofty pinnacles of modern civilisation—volleying forth incessant curls of smoke has imparted to the suburbs a most dreary and desolate appearance. Indeed the deforestation of the whole city, in and out, is complete. The aridity of this city life, devoid of the humanising and inspiring touch of gentle Nature, has reacted upon the life of citizens and they are therefore to-day looking for relief from this suffocating and artificial atmosphere. They have now realised their error in driving out Nature and are laying out garden-cities. These constitute rather a compromise between a city and a village, represent a harmonious combination of human art and soul-vivifying Nature. In these garden-cities there is symmetric distribution and allocation of parks, squares, gardens and tanks; trees are reared in rows along both sides of the streets, sometimes in the middle, sometimes in two or three rows on the streets thus segregating the different currents of traffic. Again every house has its own garden in the front. Some longitudinal portion of the street is sometimes kept evergreen with grass and installation of factories in large numbers is prohibited or discouraged.