Rupturing aesthetics from order: New challenges for inclusive urban design

Rupturing aesthetics from order: new challenges for inclusive urban design

Kulwinder KAUR, Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. kulwinder10@gmail.com

If ever there could be any remotest acknowledgement of the tussle between ‘right to beauty’ and the ‘right to the city’, beauty would have lost even before the contest began. It was no contest at all as the right to livelihood is a more basic human right compared to the right to live aesthetically. Besides, there was the problem of subjectivity in the aesthetics of urban design. The ‘utopias’ were charged with being the instruments of creating ‘order’ as the so called ‘lack of order’ was celebrated by post-structuralists. What appeared as chaos was ‘the dance of humanity’ to others.  In such a scenario, if anyone dared to resurrect aesthetics, it was at one’s own peril. By labelling aesthetics as an elitist concern , however, sociology ignored one of the crucial dimension of urban environments, i.e. design.

However, empirical evidence suggests that the ‘spatial tactics’ can turn into hegemonic practices of gang wars, crime and street violence leading to new forms of ‘habitus’. The neoliberal  urban design,  too, leaves dark shadows beneath the glitter and the ‘spectacle’. It becomes a challenge for urban designers to create aesthetic and inclusive cities. The city of New Delhi experienced an aesthetisization drive in preparation for Commonwealth Games, 2010 and in the process millions of city dwellers lost their ‘right to the city’. Some of them were re-located on the urban peripheries under the social housing schemes of the central government. One such group housing location was Bhawana on the North-West border of the city. This paper would address the above issues in the context of housing needs of the urban poor in India.