Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Ray B. Weisenburger / This research explores the challenges related to the visual image of a city situated in a developing country. Originated as the colonial capital of British India, Kolkata faces new urban challenges in the post colonial world. This report intends to answer questions of imageability of the city as relevant to the Third World countries. Empathizing on the issues of scarcity of land, traffic congestion, accumulation of the urban poor, inadequacies in infrastructure and the organic expansion of fluid city boundaries under the neo-ideological globalization and liberal economic policies – Kolkata faces a host of urban problems. Imageability of the city usually tries to define the positive image of a city. The question here is, should the notions of imageability be confined to cities that inherently have succeeded in maintaining an appealing public image or should it be applied to the potential qualities of visual appropriateness to cities that have historically remained unattractive? This research intends to explore the visual quality of an area surrounding the five point intersection at Shyambazar, Kolkata, India. This study will be based on a number of observations and the different visual analysis techniques applicable in critically analyzing the visual conditions of an urban street pattern of a megacity in India. The main objective of this study is to find an appropriate visual quality for Kolkata, a megacity in the tropics – considering various related factors like – historical significance, demographic trends, geographical and climatological influences, transportation pattern, existing land use, socio-economic structure and inherent or associated urban problems of planning in developing nations.

Configurations of Life historicizes four distinct clusters of biological research in colonial and early post-colonial India: the Zoological Survey of India, the so called ‘wolf-children’ natural experiment by anthropologists, the program in plant physiology and insect behavior at the Bose Institute, and the interdisciplinary group led by JBS Haldane at the Indian Statistical Institute. Each of these clusters, the dissertation shows, was invested in characterizing their sciences as specifically Indian in character: in the case of the “wolf-children,” by seizing on a supposedly endemic Indian social and natural phenomenon, and in the others, by claiming an allegedly Indian epistemological stance. Each, the dissertation argues, sought authority by claiming to provide heterodox and distinctly Indian solutions to the most fundamental question of biological science – what is life? – though they differed wildly on what ‘life,’ or ‘Indian,’ or indeed, ‘science’ itself meant. While the extant historiography has often read the effusion of similar claims to ‘Indianness’ in modern knowledge systems around the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a discursive byproduct of nationalism, this dissertation shows that the pursuit of an ‘Indian’ biology cut across racial, national and ideological lines among scientists working in British and early independent India. Instead, by tracking the complex relations between the institutional politics, material culture, and theoretical concerns across these clusters, the dissertation charts out the proselytization, practice and eventual demise of four very distinct understandings of an Indian science of life, based on ecological fieldwork, so-called natural experiments, laboratory instrumentation, and a holistic synthesis between population genetics, statistics and history, respectively. The question of the meaning of life, the dissertation shows, was mostly a rhetorical device invoked to underline the theoretical and methodological ambitions of these sciences, while enabling their individual conceptualizations of the relations between environments and organisms, between heredity and habitat, or between human and animal, to be read as the configurations of life itself. These attempts to create new, distinctly Indian knowledge systems and practices existed side by side and were informed with the larger popular and political project claiming ancient scientific glory on behalf of India, but their aspirations and methods cannot be historically conflated.

This dissertation examines the question of whether Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), a technique developed in the United States, might prove useful in Calcutta for urban conservation. ln many cases, municipal governments in India have been unable to preserve structures of historic value because they lacked the funds to compensate the Iosses imposed by designation. The owners of the Iandmark structures suffer financial Iosses for not being allowed to develop their properties to their full potential. The TDR technique has the advantage that through this program the owner of a designated Iandmark Is compensated from the sale of the unused development rights In his property. The community is benefited because of the landmark being preserved without the community’s cost. The City is benefited by the additional tax from the development potentials transferred from the Iandmark properties, which would have remained untaxed otherwise. This paper begins by providing an overview of the developments in building regulations, and emergence of TDR as an useful means for land use management through flexibility in zoning. The ongoing TDR programs of seven American cities and a forthcoming one are then studied to identify the central issues and features of this technique. The next chapter is devoted to the analyses of the problems and prospects of TDR programs in the United States. This includes an examination of the issues derived from the case studies as well as a questionnaire survey. The discussion in the following chapter provides some background on the city of Calcutta. The demand for redevelopment in the central city is compounded by the salutation that the growth of population is not matched by physical expansion of the city. CaIcutta’s economic climate, political environment and conservation ethics are also discussed to provide a comprehensive perspective of the testing ground. The test of the technique in Calcutta is discussed in the following chapter with reference to some cases. The concluding chapter includes the general and particular principles that ought to govern the TDR program in Calcutta. The conclusion also includes the administrative and institutional details that will be necessary to apply TDR technique in Calcutta. To summarize the findings of this research, it can be stated that the existing programs in the US cities have entered a second generation. While the legal issues attracted most attention in the first generation, the emphasis has now shifted to the design and implementation of the programs. The need for the program's close coordination with the overall planning and urban design of the city has been recognized. However, each program is designed according to some bias, and in view of supplementing some other planning goals - some of them being compatible, while others are not. The main issues of the program are: balance between TDR supply and market demand, distance between the originating and receiving sites, urban design and planning in the receiving districts, overage limit ln relation to the zoned density, transfer from public landmarks, banking of TDRs, and a 'single window' administration of the program for easy and 'fast track' approval incentive. Although a general downzoning and suspension of other bonus provisions will facilitate the TDR program, the market does not seem to support such steps. lncorporation of a TDR program in Calcutta is possible without any change in the existing building by-laws, but with a relaxation in the regulations governing the land ownership limits. The TDR prices in the receiving sites in BBD Bag and Esplanade areas commensurably match with the TDR values in the sending district of the Bag. But a district-wise transfer will have to be allowed rather than only to physically attached sites. Other receiving districts in the north and south axis along the rapid transit line have potential for future transfers. / Ph. D.