Late 20th Century (1975–2000)

New Town Kolkata (Rajarhat)

1999– · India · South Asia · Garden city, decentralization, and the town-country synthesis · Planned by HIDCO
Aerial view of New Town Kolkata (Rajarhat) showing the planned grid of wide arterial roads, sectors and superblocks of the HIDCO master plan. The official HIDCO/NKDA land-use master-plan maps are copy
Aerial view of New Town Kolkata (Rajarhat) showing the planned grid of wide arterial roads, sectors and superblocks of the HIDCO master plan. The official HIDCO/NKDA land-use master-plan maps are copy · cc-by-sa

Core idea

Planned satellite with IT zones

Why it matters

Eases pressure on Kolkata

Description

New Town Kolkata, commonly known as Rajarhat, is a planned satellite city developed from 1999 on Kolkata's north-eastern fringe by the state agency HIDCO. Laid out in successive action areas, it combines an information-technology and business hub with large residential neighbourhoods, institutional zones, arterial boulevards and a central business district, intended to absorb growth and ease pressure on the congested core of Kolkata.

Significance

Rajarhat belongs to the lineage of Indian state-led new towns descending from the decentralisation ideals of the garden city and Salt Lake before it, updated for the IT-driven economy of the liberalisation era. It has also become a focus of scholarship on land acquisition, displaced agrarian communities and the speculative character of peripheral urbanisation in India.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.