Shaping the impact of large scale infrastructure inserts in urban fringes: a case of Sabarmati, Ahmedabad

Abstract

The peripheral areas of the city are complex urban entities. Urbanization in India has an important concomitant that the villages located around the city eventually get included in the boundaries of the urbanized. In this area a stark contrast can be observed between the fabric of old village settlements and new urban developments. These are urban villages, a situation when the urban of the city expands to its fringes and engulfs the existing rural areas leading to isolated village settlements. This creates a conflicted zone with the residential village becoming a separated stagnant area surrounded with a sudden change of fabric often leading to adverse impact on social, economic and physical aspect of the functioning of these fringes. These fringes face addition of various kinds of infrastructure due to the pressures of urbanization. The inserts could be energy projects, sports and cultural inserts and transport infrastructure. The sudden insert in the already distressed fabric causes the structure to collapse. Conflicting evidence seen in the case studies point out that this addition could be either good or bad for the urban growth. High Speed Rail station is taken into account in the thesis which is a pilot project in India. Out of the proposed 4 phases, the first phase will run from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and back. Because of the large capacity and reduced time, that is a high possibility of the station becoming the new landmark of the region thus bringing with it large scale and fast change in its influence area. The thesis examines how transport inserts like HSR and others affect the peripheral area of Ahmedabad along with their existing problems and conflicts with the urban villages and in which way they can be used to shape and direct the growth to a desired positive direction.