New Delhi

City Planning

 New Delhi is the capital of the Republic of India, and the seat of executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the Government of India. It also serves as the centre of the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi and is one of the eleven districts of Delhi National Capital Territory. The foundation stone of the city was laid on 15 December 1911. It was planned by two leading 20th-century British architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker.

Concept
Planned in 1912-13, and inaugurated in 1931, as the capital of the erstwhile British Empire in India, is evidence of the extraordinary fusion of two dominant themes of the early twentieth century city planning- the City Beautiful (vistas) and the Garden city (verdure) Movements. The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" (parks), containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture. New Delhi has now grown to 1,500 square kilometers, or almost 600 square miles, expanding 60 times from the 10 square miles that was initially sought for it.

Connaught Place,
It is one of the largest financial, commercial and business
centers in Delhi. It is often abbreviated as CP and houses the headquarters of several Indian firms. Its surroundings occupy a place of pride, counted among the top heritage structures of the city. It was

developed as a showpiece of Lutyens' Delhi featuring a

Central Business District. Named after the Duke of Connaught, the construction work was started in 1929 and completed in 1933.

 It was renamed as the Rajiv Chowk after the late Indian Prime

Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Today, Connaught Place is one of the most

vibrant business districts of Delhi. It is the fourth most expensive office destination in the world, according to global property consultant .

Construction:
The circle was eventually planned with two concentric circles, creating

Inner Circle, Middle Circle and the

Outer Circle and seven radial roads, around a circular central park.

As per the original plan, the

different blocks of Connaught Place were to be joined from above, employing archways, with radial roads below them, but the circle was

'broken up' to give it a grander scale.

 Even the blocks were originally planned to 172 meters high, but
later reduced to present two-storied structure with an open colonnade. Governments plans to have the New Delhi Railway Station to be built inside the Central Park was rejected by the Railways as it found the idea impractical, instead it chose the nearby Paharganj area.

 The architects designed a plan not far removed from Versailles and Washington, DC, with numerous diagonals and wide avenues connecting important sites. The viceroy's palace was placed at the focal point of the plan, which was a purposeful reinforcement of the colonizing power. In fact, there are sources that claim it is the largest residence for a head of state in the world.

New Delhi is unique amongst the capital cities exhibited here in that it was sited adjacent to a large existing city.

 Originally, plans were made to extend a grand axis north into the old city, to establish connections between old and new. From the beginning, social stratification was built into the plan, with higher class residences built in the center of the city, and progressively lower class residences fanning outward. Borrowing heavily from the Garden City movement, density was extremely low, and, with few exceptions, these densities have remain enforced to this day.

Urban structure
The central axis of New Delhi, which today faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a North-South axis, linking Viceroy's House with Paharganj, as the end of the axis. Eventually owing to space constraints and presence of a large number of heritage sites in the North side, the committee settled on the South site. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroy's House. The historic reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was also considered the site of Indraprastha, the ancient region of Delhi.

 New Delhi is structured around two central promenades called the Rajpath and the Janpath. The Rajpath, or King's Way, stretches from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the India Gate. The Janpath (Hindi: "Path of the People"), formerly Queen's Way, begins at Connaught Circus and cuts the Rajpath at right angles. 19 foreign embassies are located on the nearby Shantipath (Hindi: "Path of Peace"), making it the largest diplomatic enclave in India. At the heart of the city is the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (formerly known as Viceroy's House) which sits atop Raisina Hill.

 The Secretariat, which houses various ministries of the Government of India, flanks out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Parliament House, designed by Herbert Baker, is located at the Sansad Marg, which runs parallel to the Rajpath. The Connaught Place is a large, circular commercial area in New Delhi, modelled after the Royal Crescent in England. Twelve separate roads lead out of the outer ring of Connaught Place, one of them being the Janpath.