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Le Corbusier's Master Plan
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'The Master plan prepared by Le Corbusier was broadly similar to the one prepared
by the team of planners led by Albert Mayer and Mathew Novicki except that the shape
of the city plan was modified from one with a curving road network to rectangular
shape with a grid iron pattern for the fast traffic roads, besides reducing its
area for reason of economy. The city plan was conceived as post war 'Garden City'
wherein vertical and high rise buildings were ruled out, keeping in view the socio
economic-conditions and living habits of the people.
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Due to economic constraints, the master plan was to be realized in two phases, catering
to a total population of half a million. Phase-I consisting of 30 low density sector
spread over an area of 9000 acres (Sector 1 to 30) for 1,50,000 people whereas Phase-II
consisting of 17 considerably high density Sectors ( Sectors 31 to 47) spread over
an area of 6000 acres for a population of 3,50,000.
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The primary module of city's design is a Sector, a neighborhood unit of size 800
meters x 1200 meters. It is a self-sufficient unit having shops, school, health
centers and places of recreations and worship. The population of a sector varies
between 3000 and 20000 depending upon the sizes of plots and the topography of the
area. The shops are located along the V4 street (shopping street), which runs North-West
to South-East across the sector. Every sector is introvert in character and permits
only 4 vehicular entries into its interior.
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The shopping street of each sector is linked to the shopping street of the adjoining
sectors thus forming one long, continuous ribbon like shopping street. The central
green of each Sector also stretches to the green of the next sector
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Le Corbusier's traffic system followed Mayer's lines but was more elaborate; he
called it Les Sept Voies de Circulation, or Seven Vs.The rationale of his planning
was the motor car.
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"From his early studies in urbanism, Le Corbusier had identified the motor car as
the central factor of modern town planning. His initial, primarily aesthetic, quasi-Futurist
response to the motor car and to rapid movement in the cities had, by 1950, metamorphosed
into a theoretical solution to the problems of modern traffic -- a graded system
of circulation, from crossing continents to walking to the front door. [As Le Corbusier
put it] 'The 7 Vs act in the town plan as the bloodstream, the lymph system and
the respiratory system act in biology. These systems are quite rational, they are
different from each other, there is no confusion between them, yet they are in harmony
...
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It is for us to learn from them when we are organising the ground that lies beneath
our feet. The 7Vs are no longer the sinister instruments of death, but become an
organised hierarchy of roads which can bring modern traffic circulation under control'."
[ Prasad Sunand, 1987].
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The 7Vs establishes a hierarchy of traffic circulation ranging from : arterial roads
(V1), major boulevards (V2) sector definers (V3), shopping streets (V4), neighbourhood
streets (V5), access lanes (V6) and pedestrian paths and cycle tracks (V7s and V8s).
The essence of his plan for Chandigarh rests on preserving intact the true functions
of these seven types of roads.[For details see Le Corbusier's Statue of Land]
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The entrance of cars into the sectors, which are exclusively reserved to family
life, can take place on four points only; in the middle of the 1,200 meters; in
the middle of the 800 meters. All stoppage of circulation shall be prohibited at
the four circuses, at the angles of the sectors. The bus stops are provided each
time at
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200 meters from the circus so as to served the four pedestrian entrances into a
sector. Thus the transit traffic takes place out of the sectors; the sectors being
surrounded by four wall-bound car roads without openings (the V3s). The road system
was so designed that "never a door will open on the surrounding V3s: precisely the
four surrounding V3s must be separated from the sector by a blind wall all along."
Buses can ply on the V4s, the horizontal connection between contiguous sectors,
but not within the sector interiors. [Evenson, Norma, 1966]
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