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American Suburbia Sprawls Its Way To India

Posted by: David Gest

28 January 2006 - 5:00am

With rampant globalization and growth, Indian architects and developers are using as many established planning models as they can -- including 'New Jersey Suburban'.

"Visualise this. Houses on one-acre plots with low tiled roofs, two car garages and picket fences, picture windows, neatly curtained, looking out on trimmed lawns -- a transplanted subdivision of New Jersey, complete with rambling ranch-style homes? No. Just a private housing estate in suburban Bangalore, built as promised in the brochure, along American lines...An American answer to every Indian urban situation produces this sort of misguided animated development, now found throughout India."

"The perfect picture has already formed somewhere in the world and we are merely buyers on an expensive and indulgent shopping spree. Take an American highway and string it between Mumbai and Pune. Plant a New Jersey suburb in Bangalore, copy a California condominium in Gurgaon. Help yourself to South Korean rail technology, buy yourself German carriages. Ask a Spanish designer to build a world-class airport. Do it, because action must be seen to have been taken, and it's just too bad if the international amalgam is a mess."

Full Story: Sim cities
Source: Hindustan Times, January 24, 2006
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it's the inevitable fallout of globalization

Submitted by injunplanna on Fri, 03/10/2006 - 13:29.

diversity in all parts of society are threatened due to globalization. Particularly in places like India and China where there is a frenzy to be just like the west. Adaptation of good ideas has become a victim of both the proponents of the westernization and the opponents of globalization. I strongly believe, in India, this malaise is because the poor investment in professional universities in understanding Indian cultural and historical significance. The labor on which the Indian economy is riding really doesn't value such ideas as they are trained as drones in a bee hive. That added to the hypnotic state of the urban population's mad desire of aping western values and lifestyles, has made this a very unyeilding situation.

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