MEASURES FOR CREATING URBAN IDENTITY

One of the most disturbing aspects of urban life is the "sameness" and boredom of urban fabric. This is especially so in the so called advanced countries where all shops and stores are branded copies of models, logos and images approved in corporate board meetings. Architecture in many countries has assumed the appearances of global magazines and dull repetition. Just as every television programme seems the same, so the streetscapes! Small towns and suburbs suffer this ailment to the extreme.

While the Architectural Guidelines are often criticized, they have surely resulted in many smaller Bhutanese towns having a nice human scale with a human touch. This can be compared with the Indian plains, or the Mid-west of America, where chaos is at one extreme, and complete boredom is at the other! Neither typology really carries any sense of identity, nor creates positive images that one can carry in their memories.

Towns and cities create images and memories, good and bad. These give urban settlements unique identities. The collective mental picture…the image of the city…is composed of a composite view of urban artifacts: buildings, bridges, monuments, natural views, sacred places and other special features.

Landmarks and Focal Points

Landmarks can be as small as the Clock Tower in Thimphu, or as large as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. They can be tiny or huge, but what is important is that they give a unique identity to a place, be it Clock Tower Square, or the entire City of Paris! Within a town, landmarks help people identify different zones of the town, and become anchors in the mental maps they generate of a city. The Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris can be seen way down the Champs Elysees giving the grand boulevard a sense of termination and ending! It also creates a visual axis with the Arch de Triumph at a higher elevation! Visual axes with focal points defining the ends of an urban design event, give identity to it as a place. The proposed magnificent stupa at Fulahari will become a major landmark for the town and in years to come for the city which is sure to emerge. A basic theme of the Structure Plan is to align major arteries and boulevards with this future landmark, anchoring the opposite ends of these visual channels with chortens and lhakhangs, as clear focal points.

Urban Zones and Edges

All towns and cities are made up of zones, or distinct neighborhoods. There is the town core of Thimphu, and even of Gelephu. These zones often are old villages like Hejo, in Thimphu, brought into the town's structure. But each has its own activities and nature. The Trashi Chhoe Dzong in Thimphu has one character and the Norzin Lam has yet another. In the mental map we form of a town or a city, we have data places for these imageable zones. A zone can be a university, an industrial area, a grand park, or even a slum.

The boundary of a neighborhood is its edge! Well defined towns have distinct edges and those edges can even be articulated through urban design mechanisms. Natural features, like the Mao Chhu can act as a neighborhood edge, as can a steep forest clad hillock! Boulevards, or campus boundaries, can also be edges.

Edges can be hard ones like a wall, or they can be like seams in clothing, joining two distinct parts of the town gracefully. A river, a lineal park full of green shade trees can also be a beautiful, yet separating, yet joining seam! Such edges we call "soft edges." Good urban planning uses soft edges to define zones, or neighborhoods. It is a theme of this Concept Plan to engage a variety of soft edges in our strategy.

Nodes and Hubs

It is easy to remember that there are four corner towers in Trashi Chhoe Dzong, but how many towers are there in Trongsa Dzong? Still the complex, organic nature of Trongsa Dzong give it an image, as does the simple geometry of Trashi Chhoe Dzong give it another image. They are easy to remember, not in details, but as images. A good urban plan must also have distinct parts, like zones and hubs, where there is a concentration of human activity. Whereas a landmark is a distinct object, or thing, a node or a hub is a distinct place with a unique character to it. The Memorial Chorten placed at the joining node of several roads presents a unique image, a memorable image, as does the Clock Tower Square. One is an object and the other is an activity area. In one the activity is generated by the object, and in the other the object is merely an identifying motif! Hubs and nodes are activity zones with concentrated, unique functions. It is a theme of the Concept Plan to give different Urban Hubs and Nodes their own identity and character. In each Urban Village, there will be some space left in the Village Square for institutional activity. Some specialized types of shops may compliment the convenience shops in one, or a very specific institution will come up in another. The Town Core Urban Hub will have a very different set of activities, and a very different 'feel' than the proposed Urban Hub to the north of town. The Industrial Estate and the Gateway to the Kingdom will also have their own characters, activities, functions and 'feel.' The alignment of these hubs and nodes in the Concept Plan brings the urban composition into one fabric.

Channels, Paths and Connectors

One of the themes of the Gelephu Structure Plan is the use of boulevards and arterial roads to give structure to the town. These channels serve more than just space for roads and movement.

These visual and movement paths each develop their own unique character over time. Norzin Lam is very different from Doebum Lam! Though near to one another, each has its own streetscape created from its own density, scale, fabric of greenery and built facades and massing! The uniqueness and the quality of these channels provide a sense of identity to the town.

In the Gelephu Structure Plan a number of such channels are proposed. One is the Royal Boulevard, running north to south on the present Trongsa Road and another is the proposed Sarpang-Gelephu Urban Corridor. There is an entire movement web, aligning landmarks, connecting nodes and hubs and becoming attractive memories in themselves. The attractiveness of a road is determined to a great extent by the building rules which determine the height of buildings, whether there will be an arcade or a garden footpath, and even pre-designed facades, which all developers must employ! One of the themes of the Concept Plan is to provide strict urban design guidelines which will shape the future street facades of the town.

The Urban Landscape

Every town and every city has opportunities and constraints to develop their natural settings to the advantage of future generations and to give a unique sense of identity to the place. Gelephu is blessed with the backdrop of the Great Himalayas. One can drive up the mountainsides and have a spectacular view down on the town too! There is a wide river basin and as the water is trained, this natural feature can add a great deal to the urban landscape.

The streams and rivulets each offer an opportunity to integrate them as Green Fingers reaching through the future town and city. Thus, designing with nature, integrating with nature and using nature to our advantage is a key theme of this Structure Plan.