New Delhi,
There was a need to liberate city planning of the “tyranny of images”, noted architect Rahul Mehrotra asserted while lamenting that urban planners want metro cities such as Delhi and Mumbai to look like Singapore or Shanghai.

He was speaking at the second Jhabvala memorial lecture here yesterday, the series instituted by the School of Planning and Architecture and the Jhabvala family.

It was organised in memory of the legendary architect and professor CSH Jhabvala who had also authored the book, “Old Delhi, New York”.

“It is about time that planning for our cities is liberated of the tyranny of images,” Mehrotra said. “Planners want Delhi or Mumbai to look like Singapore or Shanghai; then, Nasik wants to look like Mumbai; and, this tyranny perpetuates itself in planners’ imagination irrespective of the needs, environment, capacities and resources,” he said.

The 1959-born architect, urbanist and educator, is also Professor of Urban Design and Planning and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and part of the urban conservation movement in the country, particularly Mumbai.

Mehrotra also rued that 99 per cent of the professional narrative was devoted to catering to the “fancies and preferences” of “1 per cent” affluent clients. According to him, this bias was producing “an architecture of indulgence” ignoring the issues of inequality, pluralism, conservation and ecology.