Markets and the City: Planning Interventions & Markets in Guwahati City, India

Abstract

Older cities pre-existing the founding of modern Guwahati city were important trade centers in the Indian eastern region. From the nineteenth century, the colonial regime began reorganizing the spaces in Indian urban centers through town planning schemes. The article investigates how town planning schemes and modern urban planning in Guwahati city changed the forms and locations of the public markets with the city’s outwards expansion. An exploratory approach was taken to review the archival and documentary material available on Guwahati’s public markets, including the publicly available historical maps and master plans to understand the public rationale for the changes. Although ideas of change and development were inducted into the city land-use plans, the article yields an answer to the problem of why successive master plans have failed to get the natural development of the city public markets to follow the urban planning goals for the city.