Chandigarh

關於Chandigarh

Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northwestern India, serving as a shared capital for the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the remaining directions. Chandigarh constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which also includes the adjacent satellite cities of Panchkula in Haryana and Mohali in Punjab. It is located 260 km (162 miles) northwest of New Delhi and 229 km (143 miles) southeast of Amritsar and 104 km (64 miles) southwest of Shimla.

Chandigarh became one of the earliest planned cities in post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Le Corbusier, which built upon earlier plans created by architect Maciej Nowicki and the Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city were designed by a team headed by Le Corbusier and architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. Chandigarh's Capitol Complex—as part of a global ensemble of Le Corbusier's buildings—was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO at the 40th session of the World Heritage Conference in July 2016.

Chandigarh has grown greatly since its initial construction, and has also driven the development of Mohali and Panchkula; the tri-city metropolitan area has a combined population of over 1,611,770. The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. The union territory has the third-highest Human Development Index among Indian states and territories. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics ranked it as the happiest city in India on the happiness index. In 2015, an article published by the BBC identified Chandigarh as one of the few master-planned cities in the world to have succeeded in terms of combining monumental architecture, cultural growth, and modernisation.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.