NESTED COHABITATION: THE MODERN CITY & URBAN VILLAGES Mayank Ojha E-mail: mayank.ojha@gmail .com Fig. 1 Aerial view of village Kumbra in Sector 68, Mohali INTRODUCTION The city form is an expression of culture in the dimension of time and space. The structuring of the city should be rooted in the cultural society and refer to a concept that take attention for technical, aesthetics, and socio-cultural aspects simultaneously. 1 This would hold true, to a large extent, for the traditionally grown cities up to a certain size. Modern urban planning in India did not evolve over such traditional design practices and was fundamentally introduced by the British during the colonial rule. Once a central planning authority (such as the municipal corporation) is formed, which takes up the responsibility of controlling the growth and expansion of urban areas, through planning and policy making, the traces of society, culture and even the market forces asserting a direct impact over urban form and pattern descend as secondary factors. The development of Chandigarh post-independence set the rational planning method, also known as comprehensive planning or master planning 2 , as a paradigm for future urban developments, as intended by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru himself. There have been numerous debates and discussions over the garden city movement, master planning approach, and consequently, over the Chandigarh experiment. Locally, these have mainly focussed on the planned part of the city, while since the last two decades or so, the focus has shifted to the peripheral slum developments, or the neighbouring townships of Panchkula & Mohali etc. Yet, the rural, agrarian settlements of the region existing prior to any urban development, which formed a blind spot in the thinking of the city’s planners, continue to face the apathy as they lack a holistic developmental path or a long term vision. Although the modernist planning paradigm is accredited for the initiation of the urbanisation process of these villages as well as the birth of new urban conditions, it is critiqued for its selective and exclusive approach and is adverse to the growth and expansion of the villages following a natural trajectory. Thus, this paper is