history also determined the form of what we know as delhi today - 7 cities of Delhi! and then the weird connections with New Delhi. I haven't seen Delhi since the ring road days so would be interested in seeing what happened to the old civil lines area that has a metro now! Also not sure NY can be accused of homogenity. Historically the irish and the italians and other immigrant communities had fairly strong territorial lines, hence the neighborhoods even today. it is also debatable whether the urban planning was truly more sophisticated - separation of use and zoning have been held responsible for a variety of ills in the last 40 years including sterility of the streetscape, loss of Main street (residences above and shops below-reminds me of Chandni Chowk!), crime and isolation. A great book on this subject is Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American cities (the reference point really is NY for this work). Robert Moses, a very influential city planner in NY, singlehandedly destroyed priceless artefacts of the past like Pennsylvania Station that rivaled Grand central. Committed group of citizens recognized that his plans included mowing down Greenwich village and SoHo and protests saved these two at least! His preference for building infrastructure for private transit and automobile rather than public transit is well documented and certainly gave impetus to the destruction of many traditional neighborhoods, expansion of ghettoes, urban flight.
On the other hand, the landscape planning in NY, thanks to the influence of Frederick Olmstead, is of a high caliber. > Maybe cultural and linguistic homogeneity is an assumption for the law to > hold. I'm sure both Bombay and Delhi didn't grow in the same organic fashion > as US cities might have due to such barriers which are far less in the US, > not to mention more sophisticated urban planning. On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 6:15 AM, Kiran K Karthikeyan < kiran.karthike...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/5/21 Pranesh Prakash <the.solips...@gmail.com> > > > Additionally, I don't think Zipf's law holds well > > for Indian cities. > > > > For "urban areas by population", the sink of all knowledge tells us: > > Bombay 20,400,000 > > Delhi 19,830,000 > > Calcutta 15,250,000 > > Madras 7,400,000 > > Bangalore 7,030,000 > > > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population> > > > > > Kiran >
