8/26/2014 Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International

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Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi

Ripin Kalra highlights new opportunities for Delhis favourite centre as a result of a
new mass-transit system

Connaught Place (CP) built and inaugurated in the 1930s, started bustling as the
grand marketplace of British New Delhi and later served remarkably well as the pre-
eminent shopping and tourist centre of a national capital city. More recently, its
much loved but rigid urban form has also been one of its biggest limitations in the
new global economy. CP highlights several issues in the transformation of an
emblematic urban place and the management of its continued relevance to the city.

Marketplace for an imperial city, 1930s
Connaught Place was conceived as a market-place for imperial New Delhi. Sir Edwin
Lutyens, when drawing up the plans for British New Delhi (circa 1915) meant the
new city to lie southwest of the walled city of Shahjahanabad. In the true sprit of
colonial rule, the interface between this new imperial city and the older native
settlement was intended to be a market, where Lutyens imagined the Indian
traders would invest in a grand shopping centre for the residents of
Shahjahanabad and New Delhi. And so the idea of a market at D-circle was born.
This might also have been a security device. The British were housed south of
Kingsway (now Rajpath) and so the market and the spacious bungalows of the
Indians lay between them and the crowded Shahjahanabad, at a safe distance
from political meetings and demonstrations.
The market itself gets the name Connaught Place in honour of the Duke of
Connaught who visited Delhi in 1921. By this time, RT Russel, chief architect in the
central public works department was ready with the concentric design. The plans
Colonnade at Connaught Place
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8/26/2014 Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International
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for New Delhi had several critics: first, the imperial city was being built in a period
when the first world war had placed severe restrictions on British resources and
such a city plan was seen as an extravagance. Social planners such as Patrick
Geddes suggested the option of carefully redeveloping the walled city as far more
symbolic and beneficial than imposing a new capital at tremendous expense.
However, the symbolic appeal of the designs was irresistible and Connaught Place
was eventually financed primarily through the investments of local traders in shops
and apartments.
In its form, CP is like a large doughnut with a garden in the centre. The outer and
inner faces of the doughnut are the spacious colonnaded walkways or verandas,
which give CP its unique identity. The concentric buildings are reached by the inner,
outer and middle circles and eight roads radiating out from the concentric
arrangements. One of the radial roads, Parliament Street connected CP and the
Parliament house and is laid along a symbolic vista aligning with the Jama Masjid
(Mosque) in the walled city.
Prior to 1947 CP was the shopping centre for Europeans and rich Indians. Junior
clerks and officials of Indian origin shopped at smaller satellite markets such as Gole
and Bengali. CPs mixed-use arrangement was apartments on the upper floors and
retail on the ground floors. The apartments were entered through the middle circle
flanked by patches of gardens and the shops opened into the verandas in the
outer and inner circles. The cinema at the Regal Building and a number of cafs and
tea rooms were popular social venues.

Centre for a capital city, 1947
After 1947 New Delhi became the capital of independent India. This brought into
Delhi a scaled up central government, limited influx of international businesses
(India was socialist and only partially open to foreign traders), and diplomatic
missions. At the same time there was a huge influx of people forced to relocate to
Delhi after the Indo-Pakistan partition. They were given shelter in temporary camps
and gradually housed in resettlement colonies around the city. Delhis population
grew rapidly during this period and its ethnic profile changed.
Connaught Place remained at the heart of this growth as it was already a popular
shopping centre, attractive for its prestigious shops and socialising venues. It lay
adjacent to the hub of government activity so the verandas were also ideal for
informal traders to set up their livelihoods for passing customers. Many of them
were subsequently organised into small markets along and in-between the radial
roads as preserving the character of CP became an important concern for the New
Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).

Transformation

Sketch Plan of Connaught Place
1 Regal Building
2 Park Hotel
3 NDMC
4 DLF Building
5 LIC Building
6 Imperial Hotel
7 STC Building
8 Green, now site for metro
station
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Endpiece
8/26/2014 Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International
http://www.rudi.net/books/6870 3/6
In the four decades after 1947, space has always been in high demand in and
around Connaught Place for both small traders and businesses, as well as national
and international brands or services wanting to set-up their flagship
establishments. In no specific order, space has literally been squeezed and carved
out of a very tight urban form under a multitude of ownerships and sometimes
informal agreements:
apartments on upper floor were converted into space for
businesses
high rise office buildings replaced bungalows along radial
roads
a formal plan by NDMC created extra retail space and parking
under the central green area
office and business space was developed in areas adjacent to CP
many small kiosks were opened in corners and side-lanes.

Connaught Place was designed at a time when private motor vehicles were
uncommon. Most people cycled if they had to go a distance. By the late 1970s Delhi
already had one of the highest rates of growth in private vehicle ownerships in the
whole country (today Delhi has more vehicles than Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras
put together) Parking space and roads were increasingly packed by this time,
already resulting in calls and plans for CP to be greener, pedestrian-only and made
vehicle free. Needless to say, this was heavily opposed by the traders who couldnt
see the Delhi shoppers giving up their private vehicles particularly with rising
competition from retail centres in other parts of the city such as Ajmal Khan Road,
Rajndra Place, South Extension, INA Market, Greater Kailash and Jwala Heri.
Since 1962, the masterplan for Delhi was also more concerned with decentralising
Delhi and taking the focus of office and retail space away from CP. This strategy
worked but not as planned because district centres were hardly the attractive,
established or socially active spaces to provide an alternative to the charm of going
to CP. In fact, a majority of district centres failed to sell as there was not so much
interest among traders and businesses to invest in expensive space that was being
provided at a slow and unreliable pace. Instead, a large number of businesses
were set up within residential areas and urban villages scattered across Delhi.
The growth and transformation in Connaught Place were mixed, partly regulated
and partly spontaneous, a process mostly undocumented. In the meantime NDMC
became more concerned with traffic and parking issues. A number of ways were
devised to ease the jams such as regularisation of parking, pedestrian-only areas
and restricted traffic flows. A number of these plans were never implemented while
others performed well. In the 80s traffic circling CP was made one-way to reduce
congestion when getting on to the radial roads. This was well enforced and became

Informal growth of Barakhamba
Road
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8/26/2014 Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International
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a popular move.
The predominant means of travel to work in and around CP continued to be private
vehicles or chartered buses. Public transport was unreliable and overcrowded, and
discouraged the locals from travelling frequently and spontaneously to the centre,
particularly during business hours. The attraction of local markets around Delhi was
a further reason for many people to stay away from the centre.

Liberalisation and global businesses
The era of liberalisation for the Indian economy started in the early 1990s.
Connaught Place entered it with a name change. Officially since then, it is called
Rajiv Chowk after the prime-minister Rajiv Gandhi who was tragically assassinated.
The physical symbol of this era for CP is the Jeevan Bharati Building which was
completed in the early 1990s and broke away from the low-rise circular colonnaded
form. Suddenly the psychological barrier that CPs inner circle had to retain its low
rise form was broken. There was a lot of criticism for this design but space was
rapidly taken up by multinationals. Across the street a new block - DLF Plaza - was
built on Parliament Street and rapidly let to British Airways, ABN-AMRO bank and
other multinationals. Park Hotel and Imperial Hotel have also undergone substantial
and expensive refurbishments to prepare for the potential demand. The cottage
emporium previously sitting in an army barracks was housed in the STC building on
Janpath. Private companies developed a few new multi-storey structures along
Kasturba Gandhi Marg and Barakhamba Road and these were let out to
multinationals.
However, by the mid-1990s real-estate agencies started to highlight the
advantages for multinationals to make base outside CP and particularly on sites in
adjacent states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh where plenty of space was
available in close proximity to both the city of Delhi and the international airport.
These sites offered ready, more flexible and larger business spaces at lower costs
than CP, more possibilities for residential and social space for their employees and
proximity to several other multinationals. By comparison, redevelopment in CP was
complicated by multiple ownerships, ongoing tenancies, high costs and more
restrictive space. Towards the end of the 90s, prominent multinationals such as
Indian Oil Corporation, Samsung, Smith Klien Beechham, Banque Paribas and ING
moved out of CP towards Southern Delhi and Gurgaon.
The public access and transport situation to Gurgaon is worse than CP but the
businesses have gone around this problem by employing large fleets of private cars
to shift staff and goods. New buildings have made provision to accommodate
parking at a large scale. CP has thus found itself fairly restricted to attract a fair
share of business and investment that has come in since 1990s. At the same time
there were no plans to improve CPs competitiveness through comprehensive
redevelopment.



Recent growth in Gargaon
8/26/2014 Second Wind for Connaught Place, New Delhi | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International
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Bangkok: Mass Transit to the Rescue up Bahla Fort and Oasis, Oman
The second wind: better access for CP
Today a new development provides an opportunity for CP to reconnect with the
city. By July 2005 the new metro rail will make CP more accessible at the city scale
by reconnecting it to key hubs in North Delhi such as the Delhi University, Central
Secretariat and Rohini (largest residential development in Asia), and by 2010 to
Southern Delhi and the airport. Despite the wide-spread developments taking place
in the city, no retail or leisure development in Delhi can compare with the totality of
the CP experience. In that sense its status as a social hub is secure and there is a
tremendous opportunity to draw back some crowds previously discouraged by
difficult access.
New Delhi is now preparing for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and bidding for
the Asian Games in 2012. The NDMC has also planned improvement of the
structures and careful landscaping to improve the physical aspect of CP.
Development of the businesses is piecemeal but is gathering pace. Since 2000, the
activity by private developers and renewed enthusiasm of governments to enforce
building regulations have ensured that both new and appropriate existing space
have been released for occupancy and development. A number of smaller business
and newer multinationals have taken advantage of the resulting price corrections to
take-up space within CP.
However, the pressure on local authorities to improve the competitiveness of CP
will only be released through a comprehensive scheme. This should be a priority
and will ensure that CP meets its potential in attracting international business and
investment without losing its well-known, well-loved appeal for the people of Delhi.

Ripin Kalra, research fellow at the Max Locke Centre, University of Westminster

New metro station at Connaught
Place
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