Communitarian regionalism in India: how lessons from the New Deal Greenbelt Town programme translated to postwar India

This article examines transnational planning history following the Second World War with a focus on the diffusion of Western planning principles to postwar India by US architect-planner Albert Mayer. Specifically, Mayer’s role as a foreign advisor to the Indian government from 1946 to 1958 and the application of a US communitarian regionalist planning ethos to rural village improvement and town planning at Cawnpore (Kanpur), Greater Bombay (Mumbai), and Chandigarh is explored. Using the stages of transnational planning flows as a framework, we review the foundations of communitarian regionalism in American planning practice and Mayer’s participation in the New Deal Greenbelt Town programme to inform his translation, in partnership with American and Indian planners, of these town planning principles to suit postwar Indian planning needs. This comparative assessment allows us to present a re-examination of the transfer and adaptation of Western planning as well as exchanges of knowledge and practice within very disparate contexts.