Chandigarh
It is a city, district and union territory in India that serves as the capital of the two neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana.
Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the north, the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It is considered to be a part of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which includes Chandigarh, and the city of Panchkula (in Haryana) and cities of Kharar, New Chandigarh, Mohali, Zirakpur (in Punjab). It is located 260 km (162 miles) north of New Delhi and 229 km (143 miles) southeast of Amritsar.
It was one of the early planned cities in post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, which transformed from earlier plans created by the Polish architect Maciej Nowicki and the American planner Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city were designed by the Chandigarh Capital Project Team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. In 2015, an article published by BBC named Chandigarh as one of the few master-planned cities in the world to have succeeded in terms of combining monumental architecture, cultural growth, and modernisation.
Chandigarh's Capitol Complex was in July 2016 declared by UNESCO as World Heritage at the 40th session of World Heritage Conference held in Istanbul. UNESCO inscription was under "The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier an outstanding contribution to the Modern Movement". The Capitol Complex buildings include the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Punjab and Haryana Secretariat and Punjab and Haryana Assembly along with monuments Open hand, Martyrs Memorial, Geometric Hill and Tower of Shadow and the Rock Garden.
The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. The union territory has one of the highest Human Development Index. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics ranked it as the happiest city in India over the happiness index. The metropolitan area of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula collectively forms a Tricity, with a combined population of over 1,611,770.
History
Chandigarh was a new city constructed on the orders of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. After the partition of India in 1947, the former British province of Punjab was divided into two provinces, East Punjab in India (mostly Sikhs and Hindus) and West Punjab in Pakistan (mostly Muslims). The Indian Punjab required a new capital because the former capital,Lahore, had become part of Pakistan after the partition. In 1949 the American planner and architect Albert Mayer was commissioned to design a new city to be called "Chandigarh". The government carved out Chandigarh from about fifty Puadhi-speaking villages in the then-state of East Punjab, India. Shimla was the temporary capital of East Punjab until Chandigarh was completed in 1960.
Albert Mayer developed a superblock-based city interspersed with green spaces which with an emphasis on cellular neighbourhoods and traffic segregation. His site-plan took advantage of natural land characteristics; the land's gentle grade promoted proper drainage. Mayer stopped work after his architect-partner Matthew Nowicki died in a plane crash in 1950. Government officials recruited Le Corbusier to succeed Mayer and Nowicki, who enlisted many elements of Mayer's original plan without attributing them to him.
Le Corbusier designed many administration buildings, including the High Court, the Palace of Assembly, and the Secretariat Building. Le Corbusier also designed the general layout of the city, dividing it into sectors. Chandigarh hosts the largest of Le Corbusier's many Open Hand sculptures, standing 26 metres high. The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte) is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." It represents what Le Corbusier called the "Second Machine Age". Two of the six monuments planned in the Capitol Complex which has the High Court, the Assembly, and the Secretariat, remain incomplete. These include Geometric Hill and Martyrs Memorial; drawings were made, and they were begun in 1956, but they were never completed.
The capital city was officially shifted from Shimla to Chandigarh on 21 September 1953, though Chandigarh was formally inaugurated by India's first president, Rajendra Prasad on 7 October 1953.
On 1 November 1966, the newly formed state of Haryana was carved out of the eastern and southern portion of East Punjab, to create a new state for the majority Haryanvi-speaking people in that portion, while the western portion of East Punjab retained a mostly Punjabi-speaking majority and was renamed as Punjab. Chandigarh was located on the border of both states and the states moved to incorporate the city into their respective territories. However, the city of Chandigarh was declared a union territory to serve as capital of both states.
As of 2016, many historical villages in Chandigarh are still inhabited within the modern blocks of sectors including Burail and Ottawa, while several non-sectoral villages lie on the outskirts of the city. These villages were a part of the pre-Chandigarh era.
Geography
Location
Chandigarh is located near the foothills of the Sivalik Range of the Himalayas in northwest India. It covers an area of approximately 114 km2. It borders the states of Punjab and Haryana. The exact geographic coordinates of Chandigarh are 30.74°N 76.79°E. It has an average elevation of 321 metres (1053 ft).
The city, lying in the northern plains, includes a vast area of flat, fertile land. Its northeast covers sections of Bhabar and while the remainder of its terrain is part of the Terai. The surrounding cities are Mohali, New Chandigarh, Patiala, Zirakpur and Rupnagar in Punjab, and Panchkula and Ambala in Haryana.
Chandigarh is situated 44 km (28 miles) northeast of Ambala, 229 km (143 miles) southeast of Amritsar, and 250 km (156 miles) north of Delhi.
Climate
Chandigarh has a humid subtropical climate characterised by a seasonal rhythm: very hot summers, mild winters, unreliable rainfall and great variation in temperature (−1 to 46 °C or 30.2 to 114.8 °F). The average annual rainfall is 1,110.7 millimetres or 43.73 inches.The city also receives occasional winter rains from the Western Disturbance originating over the Mediterranean Sea.
The western disturbances usually bring rain predominantly from mid-December till the end of April which can be heavier sometimes with strong winds and hails if the weather turns colder (during March–April months) which usually proves disastrous to the crops. Cold winds usually tend to come from the north near Shimla, capital of Himachal Pradesh and from the state of Jammu and Kashmir, both of which receive their share of snowfall during wintertime.
The city experiences the following seasons and the respective average temperatures:
- Spring: In the spring season (from February-end to early-April), temperatures vary between (max) 13 to 20 °C or 55.4 to 68.0 °F and (min) 5 to 12 °C or 41.0 to 53.6 °F.
- Autumn: In autumn (from September-end to mid-November), the temperature may rise to a maximum of 30 °C or 86 °F. Temperatures usually remain between 10 to 22 °C or 50.0 to 71.6 °F in autumn. The minimum temperature is around 6 °C or 42.8 °F.
- Summer: The temperature in summer (from mid-April to June-end) may rise to 44 °C or 111.2 °F in mid-June, and generally vary between 40 and 42 °C (104.0 and 107.6 °F).
- Monsoon: During the monsoon (from early-July to mid-September), Chandigarh receives moderate to heavy rainfall and sometimes heavy to very heavy rainfall (generally during the month of August or September). Usually, the rain-bearing monsoon winds blow from south-west/south-east. Mostly, the city receives heavy rain from the south (which is mainly a persistent rain) but it generally receives most of its rain during monsoon either from northwest or northeast. The maximum amount of rain received by the city of Chandigarh during the monsoon season is 195.5 millimetres or 7.70 inches in a single day.
- Winter: Winters (November-end to February-end) are mild but they can sometimes get quite chilly in Chandigarh. Average temperatures in the winter remain at (max) 5 to 14 °C or 41.0 to 57.2 °F and (min) −1 to 5 °C or 30.2 to 41.0 °F. Rain usually comes from the west during winter and usually as a persistent rain for 2-3 days, sometimes with hailstorms. The city witnessed bone-numbing chill as the maximum temperature on Monday, 7 January 2013 plunged to a 30-year low to settle at 6.1 degrees Celsius.
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