Delhi’s Shifting Shape: From Mughal Walls to Multi-Nuclei Sprawl
Delhi’s Shifting Shape: From Mughal Walls to Multi-Nuclei Sprawl IMAGE- MASTER PLAN FOR DELHI 2021 (SHOWING MODIFICATIONS UPTO 31/08/2022) Overview Delhi has never been just one city. It has been a Mughal capital, a British administrative hub, an independent India’s seat of power, and now the core of a vast urban agglomeration stretching across Noida, Gurgaon, and Faridabad. What ties all these avatars together is the way Delhi’s urban morphology—its physical form and internal structure—keeps reinventing itself. In its earliest phase, Delhi resembled the textbook Concentric Zone Theory. Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) was the crowded historic core, tightly packed with bazaars and residences, and around it grew layers—colonial New Delhi with its broad avenues, followed by post-independence colonies and institutional campuses. Even today, standing at Connaught Place, one can sense that “core-and-ring” pattern. But Delhi has long since burst out of that shell. By 2023, the city’s built-up area ...