Re-integrating Live Work Culture, Permanence and Present with the Past : a case of Pune City

Abstract

India is a developing country with a strong cultural history. Today modernization & globalization is observed everywhere. Media-scape & finance-scape are playing a major role in developing a global face for India. Global influence brings in the new avenues, opportunities & opens up new vistas for imagination. Thus, city centers witness growth of the city over time. The area marks the compilations of the history to every bit. In the transforming module we are leaving behind ourselves to fit in the global flow. Arjun Appadurai a leading theorist and anthropologist writes in his work about Meta theory of Disjuncture that “New Global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex overlapping disjunctive order”. This order is composed of different interrelated, yet disjunctive global cultural flows. In a city like Pune which hold backs its culture and tradition strongly, yet today the city stands in labyrinth where western cultures are flowing in making their way through citizens heart putting the local art, culture and community in the danger of disappearance. The traditional markets are replaced by events like Farmers choice-all organic food, traditional Holi is replaced with HD Festival of colors with loud music. Today everyone is behind branding everything possible under the fancy of globalization. The city started evolving and transforming around the axis connecting all major locations. Two major points of the corridor are the Shaniwarwada (built by Peshwas) and the Mahatma Phule Mandai (built by Britishers). The surrounding is dominated by residential neighborhood where most of the freedom fighters, poets, writers, and journalists made some major contribution in developing the face of Pune city. The corridor is well connected by street markets keeping the streets alive. Many Factors contribute to the changing face of Pune’s old core. The cultural central core of the Pune city shifted its identity from an old historic neighborhood to a commercially active zone. The 1961 floods in Pune transformed city completely, also India’s first expressway from Mumbai to Pune got in lot of migration and development opportunities. The migration led to rapid infrastructural development of the city. The core city area lost its identity and was soon taken over by commercial sector. The lack of conservation and restoration led to the demolishment of heritage structures for new concrete commercial blocks. Gentrification is quite evident and as a result city lost many residential structures and a new typology of development came in order which favored the global culture. The further study focuses on regaining the lost character of city inner-core also the strategies to improve the market conditions adjacent to the heritage corridor. The city under transformation needs to consider the socio- cultural aspects and economics intact with the selected precinct.