Anand – A Complete City

ANAND – A COMPLETE CITY

Anand is very famous for Amul industry and bringing milk revolution in the country, also known as Milk capital of INDIA. It is is an administrative district of Gujarat state in western India, with population of 1,856,872 as of 2001, spanning over an area of 2,000 sq. miles. The town itself is about 150-170 years old, but the settlement established around 100 years ago. It is located in hot and dry region, where temperature raises about 103 degree Fahrenheit during summer and average of 50 during winter.
Anand hosts Asia’s largest milk cooperative the Amul dairy. Established around 1940 A.D., the highly successful business venture is the most unique and thriving co-operative, produces more than a million tons of milk every day. And 70% of the milk produced here is sent to various neighboring cities and nearby states. An addition to the success of this venture is that it has transformed the lives of the poor villagers living in this part of the country. Incredibly, the milking business has offered wonderful opportunities to over 60,000 families who used to farm.

CITY TRNASFORMATION IN LAST 50 YEARS

HOUSING SOCIETY

Today, there is rapid growth of economy in Anand due to the city’s Vallabh Vidhyanagar which is an educational suburb of Anand. The population of V.V.Nagar is around 38,500 of which more than 22,000 are students. It is also known as “Town of youth”. Let’s say V.V.Nagar as a short name, which has more than 50 (yes thats ture, more than 50) top schools and one of the best universities of the state. Being a mile-stone of education, V.V.Nagar is always 80% surrounded by students, you can literally feel the young environment when you pass by. The entire area is so well-designed and maintained since many years and kept actively alive. As per the schematic design, the central core is open space/playground/park surrounded by hundreds of trees, gives you fresh air to breath 24/7. In the morning it is walking & exercise park for many people, that transforms into volleyball/badminton/cricket etc playground for school kids till late evening which is converted again into exercise park during night, people go for walking!! (please find attached Figure 1 to review)
It is the centralized activity that keeps the city alive, active & energetic. I started going there not only for a morning walk but more importantly to get fresh air and be away from city’s hectic life. Now this central core is surrounded by many schools and universities, hence if you go daytime, you will see thousands of kids playing around, having their lunch during break at local food-shop or small mobile food cart. The biggest advantage of studying in V.V.Nagar is you are not surrounded by only your neighbours or local friends but also with thousands of students from other states and different countries too, hence kids get international exposure and not only bright with books but also with communication & dealing with unknown people, which is the best part.
Now, the third layer is accommodation for all the students as well as local residents. As shown in the image, all schools and universities are surrounded by residential belt. It kinda works as safety belt too, as kids remain inside of the loop during the day, with minimum amount of traffic. And the outer shell is mix use of major road for transportation, along with commercial activity both side and apartments/residential above. The vital part if these belt is food market. The entire road is full of crowd, mostly pedestrians in the evening, you can eat whatever you want. You can have five star restaurant and cheap fast food mobile cart, similar to ‘hot-dog’ and ‘pritzel’ thing at almost every other corner in New York city, but even more crowded. Those mobile carts plays dominant role to keep these streets alive 24/7/365.
Lets talk about the background of family structure, housing typology and the neighbourhood. The original housing pattern was very densed. (as per shown figure 2) During the early settlements, the ‘joint family system’ where all family members live together small amount of space (compare to todays single family house) were custom built by the owners according to family needs & their affordability. The contractor system or pre-designed houses were not yet in market. Each family has maximum of 50′x100′ of area, generally 2 to 3 story high, each has private backyard (usually paved, ladies used to cook in the backyard in old days) some open paved are on either side to park their motorcycle (there were not many cars in 50′s) and small house. All these houses share common walls, its very similar to townhouses but in smaller scale. The central passage is mix use open space for everyone. Old people get together in the evening and chat, while kids play various outdoor games and youth has their activity, women share their food recipes, people come from work, pass by everyone and share some chat/news. Most of the children goes to same school, so they share lunches, homework, they all go together to the school and come together back home, which makes a child socially very active and not dependant on others. That scene makes me feel of a successful housing community where everyone shares their life with each other, specially for kids. Since today’s kids are always found with tv/game show or video games, they dont get any outdoor activity, they are less communicative and may be less challenging to them selves due to indoor monotonous life.
Many of the streets in the original town were designed to serve mix use activities. Most of the buildings are totally commercialized on the first & second floor and residential above. Almost every major street has atleast one pharmacy, one local bank, small medical/hospital, few food shops, grocery and other local retail shops. That way people did not need any transportation device to get their basic need to be fulfilled, which resulted in to small, narrow & winding streets in many area. Around 10′ wide street supported thousands of people commuting all day, while some major roads were 60′ wide enough to support 2 lane roads now a days. The magic part is how people used to manage with their vehicles in those streets/roads without any traffic light or any controllability and still resulted in rare chance of accidents. Since today we have 150′ wide road, traffic lights but still end up in accident. You can see that difference visually when you look at the area map in Figure-1, how old city was dense but well organized and how new development is more open but very scattered with no such grids or urban planning, even after so called ‘urban study’ !!
The main point of discussing all these and reason I call Anand – ‘A Complete City’, is that how physical organization resulted in social form with less efforts of master planning but still every corner of the city was well organized in terms of urban fabric & texture, urban vitality. Today, having all infrastructure planning and development facilities, we are not able to create such active environment. Is that because our approach for the life has been so formal, monotonous, dull and incorrectly sophisticated with the life machine or have become blind after socio-economical race that we forgot the real essence of society and real urban life??

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