Exploring Roger’s city plan

Auroville Today: Are cities important? If so, why?

The short version is that cities are the most efficient way for humans to thrive rather than just survive, and coexist with others with the minimum negative impact on the environment because they offer the possibility of achieving the highest density of population in the smallest ecological footprint. Moreover, due to the critical mass, they concentrate the best services and facilities – the best hospitals, schools etc. – which is why villagers gravitate to cities, seeking a better life. Cities also nourish the mind and the soul, through art and culture. Individuals have the advantage of the collective expertise rather than having to do everything themselves.

Also, those who are projecting the future of the world seem to agree that the development of a collective consciousness is the next necessary evolutionary step for humanity. And cities being the place of collective living are the best place for such a consciousness to evolve. Here the focus shifts from the dominant individual, family, or the tribe, to the commons, and thus all individuals can thrive. An urban consciousness, a civic sense, develops where everybody follows a code of common life which benefits and liberates everybody.  

In this sense, the city is recognition that the human does not thrive alone, and provides the alternative to villages, where the human interdependence can get too oppressive, especially if one does not submit to social conventions and prevailing beliefs. 

In my years of teaching urban management at the Technische Universität Berlin, our case studies showed that all good cities are those where governance is good, and this enables steady progress beyond problem solving through targets that are set and achieved. And this need for good governance applies to Auroville as well, for which it is firstly necessary to develop an urban mindset and recognise the opportunity and liberation that city life provides.

And yet for many people modern cities have acquired a bad name. 

True, in recent years cities have become unlivable. This is because of cars and motorization, an unfortunate consequence of industrialization. Apart from the pollution, safety issues and noise, this severely impacted the social fabric and led to urban sprawl, as people could now live much further away from their workplace and commute on their own. Streets that were public space and facilitated connection got replaced by roads that divided the urban fabric on either sides of the streets. People lost the opportunity of chance encounters and social contact. 

In fact, pollution and urban sprawl, which are two of the major problems of modern cities, are caused by individualism and car-centred mobility. 

How can Auroville benefit from the best of the urban experience and avoid the worst?

If somebody was to truly look at Roger Anger’s city plan with an open mind without preconceived ideas, it really is that kind of human-centric city, and more than that to fulfill Auroville’s purpose.  

It is said that the way we shape our cities, shape us. So the importance of a city’s design cannot be understated. The Mother and Roger proposed a very visionary city. The Mother specifically asked Roger to find new forms for the new consciousness. As it was conceived in the sixties, many have wrongly assumed a similarity to Brasilia or Chandigarh, but in reality Auroville is absolutely the contrary to those cities, which as we all know were based on celebrating the car and individual mobility.

In 1965, in his first report to the Mother, Roger had predicted and suggested: “The traffic principle needs to be defined right now. Should we allow the presence of cars: It is likely that in hardly a few years, India will witness, like Europe and the US, the major urban problem posed by the Automobile… The choice to be made now is therefore to forbid the use of this means of transportation within the town and replace it by another one, more healthy, less clumsy and noisy and more aesthetical, maybe more recent, if possible.” The Mother commented on the margin: “Small size electrically powered vehicles, capable of transporting about 200Kg at a speed of 15km/h.”

But mobility is just one such aspect that was so visionary and is still ahead of its times. Various other foundational principles of the city plan are as forward looking and holistic even today 54 years later. I suggest that everyone read that 1965 Report to understand the basic assumptions embedded in the Galaxy Plan.

The Mother wanted a compact city where like-minded people would live in proximity in a certain concentration and collective lifestyle, where they would be liberated from daily chores and be able to dedicate their time to the development of their consciousness in an environment of collaboration, where each one’s advances would help the others. Roger responded by designing a compact, walkable city, where the buildings would be intimately interconnected. Furthermore, he addressed the harsh sun and monsoon and included climatic comfort for pedestrians’ daily life through multilevel shaded walkways. This is another reason why the fabric of the Galaxy looks so compact.

It is a city without private ownership. In this the Mother was very prescient, for we have seen how land ownership has led to conflicts and wars, as well as affordability issues. The worst of all is gated communities within cities, as they destroy the city fabric by creating small inward-looking groupings.  

Despite the high density demand, Roger proposed a city in which the human scale was restored. He anticipated the way that tall, free-standing towers separated from the rest of the urban fabric would impose themselves in the future landscape, and that modern technologies leading to uniform glass facades would create disorientation. He avoided these negative trends through his ingenious urban design. To enable the majority of buildings to remain low-rise, he proposed just a few tall buildings concentrated along radial fingers of infrastructure, called the Lignes de Force. Then he designed an urban fabric where the tall towers do not stand oppressively alone, but gently flow into other buildings. In other words, the Lines of Force are not vertical but horizontally interconnected tall buildings that slope down progressively, the residential ones towards the Matrimandir, and the industrial ones towards the greenbelt. This was truly innovatory. No other architect at that time had imagined anything like this. 

It is also what I am developing now with the design of the Line of Goodwill. 

Not everybody has to live in these Lines of Force. Others may be happy to live in lower density dwellings which the high density Lines of Force make possible, but many will enjoy living in the Lines of Force because they will have high-tech facilities and everything will be at their doorstep. It’s also a very economical use of land and allows for the maximum consolidation of the green spaces in the city.  

There is a tug-of-war between development and environment in India, where we have one sixth of the world’s population but only 2.6% of the landmass. Therefore, to propose an elitist, green-looking version of Auroville would not make it green enough or replicable for India. 

The Galaxy Plan achieves a balance between a relatively high population density and a green environment. If it hadn’t been for Roger, the green belt would not even have existed, nor the abundance of green spaces within the city. These were introduced because Roger recognised that modernist towns had deviated from their coexistence with nature. Instead we have a city centre which is green, our periphery is green and we have a green network which is intended to also function as a green mobility network, something which is not well understood. 

One of the perennial criticisms of the Galaxy plan is that it was devised in Paris and simply dropped over an existing landscape without consideration of existing ground realities.

It was not ‘dropped’. It was the result of three intense years of work and often daily conversations between Roger and Mother, and only after the plan was finalised was the inauguration ceremony held where the model was presented. Roger’s office explored many geometries based on these discussions, but also on the terrain and the available data. It is not true that there was no data about the ground realities at that time. Look at the earliest maps and models. All the water bodies and catchments are there, so his team had taken water and climatic data into account. Note that he also pointed out in 1965 that we do not have water for the town, that this would be the biggest challenge.  

The larger problem here is that after the Mother’s passing, residents began to contest this plan and question even if there should be a city at all. In all records of Mother’s conversations with Roger or others concerning Auroville, at no point did she seek the residents’ opinions on the requirements, nor feedback on Roger’s plans. She had taken a chief architect exactly to ensure that it would be as per her specific vision, and to counter those who expressed divergent opinions, she even issued a message to Aurovilian architects and engineers not to question the plan, but simply to build it. 

She wanted people to live in Auromodèle till the city was built, so that the city would be built according to details agreed with Roger and implemented rapidly without the impediments that come when people settle there and acquire attachments. For this was not to be an ordinary city for people to merely live and satisfy individual whims, and get too comfortable. We are building a city for the new consciousness, and she wanted to make sure that this city would be exemplary and the laboratory and cradle she envisaged for the new consciousness. Roger had therefore delivered a design where the whole city was like one organism, and had the necessary coherence. Also he prioritised beauty, as he said beauty had the ability to raise our consciousness spontaneously. 

And Roger proved he is the right man for the job. He has not left a single ugly trace in Auroville. Everything he designed – the Matrimandir, Last School etc. – has been to a high standard, far higher than anything constructed since his passing. And his foresight and envisioned city plan remains visionary and more relevant than ever.

Sadly, however, many Auroville architects refused to collaborate with Roger, and some helped spread a smear campaign about him. But 50 years later, what has been constructed? Many separate gated-communities of mostly conventional apartments and increased dependency on cars.

Another thing that has been said by many of those who admire the Galaxy concept is that the 1999 Master Plan betrayed the essence of that concept in the way that, for example, the road network gained prominence.

As one of those who worked on that Master Plan, and co-signed it, I don’t think we betrayed the essence. We were making a perspective plan, not a detailed development plan, and when you submit a perspective plan you need to respect Indian building codes. Having not yet worked out detailed plans for the car-free mobility, the Town and Country Planning Office wanted us to include the typical standard sections for the various roads according to the norms. We had to incorporate their suggestions.

So government regulations are not forcing us to modify any essential aspect of the Galaxy?

No, they are only helping to take it further. And it’s worth remembering that some roads defined in the perspective plan are now proposed to have much narrower road sections as we have subsequently detailed them. As we do not want to invite cars, but provide public transport, we are proposing roads that are as narrow as possible. But we shouldn’t forget that emergency vehicles will need access… 

You worked with Roger for many years. If he was here today, with all the changes that happened in the world since 1968, including technological changes and climate change, do you think he would have modified the Galaxy? 

He would not have modified the non-negotiables and the central unifying character of the city [indicated by Roger and approved by the Residents’ Assembly in 2007 as the Lines of Force, Four Zones, 50,000 population, Matrimandir and the Peace area, the Crown and city centre eds.], not because he proposed them but because these are necessary to achieve the aim. The non-negotiables are not random, they are the core elements, the city’s DNA, and if you give up those the entire thing will collapse and be reduced to an ordinary town. Also the interconnected buildings in certain areas, covered walkways and cohesive language of the city are some defining elements. But there are many other areas, such as the Cultural Zone and International Zone buildings, as well as in the Residential Zone sectors 1 and 2, where there is a lot of freedom of expression.  

Roger also wanted to ensure liberty for the architects and hoped for a spirit of collaboration among architects in developing the fabric and spirit of the Galaxy, but he wouldn’t agree to sacrifice those aspects which were its central defining elements. He was very committed and remained clear about protecting the manifestation of the Auroville as envisaged by the Mother in order to fulfill its purpose.  

Actually, all ambitious projects face a lot of external resistance, politically and otherwise, but in Auroville we have a peculiar case where the resistance is from within, while the external support is there, and this has always been the case. But I think the birth pains we are going through at present are essentially a conflict between individualism and collectivism. Even while Mother was physically here, many individuals prioritised their personal preferences and wanted to make Auroville a place to primarily express their individuality. And after her passing, Aurovilians created a culture of individually-driven projects and houses, where neighbours have a say in who lives next to them, and acquired many other habits that are diametrically opposite to what was envisioned in a planned city which prioritises collective life.

In the 1965 document there is one revealing exchange. In response to Roger’s “…the architecture of Auroville needs to be controlled by precise regulations defining not only the general layout, a palette of colours, fences and its material, upkeep, etc. checked by an Auroville service that would be in charge.”, the Mother commented, “This measure is indispensable.”

I don’t think there are two camps. There is a new world waiting to be born and old habits that don’t serve us anymore but to which we are still clinging. But there is also great enthusiasm amidst all the fears and doubts.

You have continued to work on manifesting the Galaxy, most recently in your design for the Line of Goodwill. What has this work brought you personally?

I love doing this work. Auroville’s city plan fascinates me and I had given myself to this work: it still continues to be so exciting, so inspiring. Over three decades, I have seen its various details, great opportunities and the ingenious synthesis of all aspects of city living. I hope that it manifests as soon as possible so that also all the others get to see what I see, to enjoy and experience living in the envisioned city.

But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve faced many hostilities and even been ostracised by some Aurovilians, including architects, because of my association with Roger and for having shown great respect and fidelity to his work. Actually, it was only many years after he passed away that I began to realise the immensity of what I received from him, and this wasn’t only architectural expertise. It was a whole way of being. I feel fortunate to have been receptive to that which he had to offer, and whatever else I achieved in the world thereafter has surely been impacted by the 17 years of my close collaboration with him.