ABSTRACT
There is increasing unanimity among academics and professionals who engage with cities that the contemporary city has to equip itself with the necessary tools to meet the constantly evolving sustainable urban development indices that include, among others, land and resource management, energy needs, human well-being and culture. This chapter draws attention to the relatively little explored domain of culture as a bastion of urban cultural sustainability. I argue that the contemporary South Asian historic city is not a candidate for a visionary urbanist’s renewal plan and draw attention to its historic quarters that, as repositories of urban culture, have the potential to contribute to a new form of urbanity. Generically described as inner-city area, historic district, walled city or old city, historic city quarters are referred to as the Shahar in popular parlance in most parts of the Indian subcontinent. The Shahar is a dominant settlement type across the region, sustaining urban life as a living, improvising and ever changing entity while embodying the past, present and future. While the term Shahar is generic in nature, in the context of this chapter it implies the historic core of precolonial north Indian cities that, following the waning of Mughal power and subsequent colonization, was alienated by the colonial regime as an urban blight and continues to be neglected in the post-colonial era. Several contemporary Indian cities including Agrā, Allahabād, Amritsār, Banaras, Delhi, Gwalior, Kānpur, Lucknow and Meerut contain a Shahar at their respective cores, identifi ed in conservation parlance as a historic urban precinct, even as they have territorially expanded and evolved into bustling urban centres today. The Shahar has been the recipient of academic attention in the past largely from an urban planning perspective that regarded it as a stumbling block in a city’s development roadmap. I assert that instead of castigating the Shahar as an urban scourge, it should be considered as a cultural asset that can contribute meaningfully towards shaping a new urbanism in the South Asian context.
