ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how public areas streets, gardens, buildings and official housing estates have been regulated and used. In pre-colonial Delhi, enclosed gardens or orchards were popular areas for outings; wooded areas were associated with shrines and ascetics. To the colonial regime, open areas of meadow or woodland were a measure of security, separating the civilians from the army, the Indians from the Europeans. The counter-colonisation of sections of streets, parks and gardens has been happening since the 1860s. Shops and houses encroached on roads, and poor immigrants built shanty towns on public land. In the 1950s the poorer refugees and the many construction workers requisitioned to build new government offices also built their own neighbourhoods. Interneighbourhood and intraneighbourhood interaction on issues can soften the rampant individualism that has characterised modern Delhi, and raise urban living beyond the level of land control to that of living as communities.
