Re-Planning ‘Planned’ Public Spaces: The Neigbourhood Market of Sector 15 in Chandigarh

From the Greek Agora till today, market places have always been an important component of a city’s public realm. These are the community’s ‘open-air living rooms’ which, while contributing to the city’s economic growth, are platforms for unhindered social and cultural public interaction, and, even serve to encourage upward mobility in society. However, concepts of the public space in planned cities, especially the utopian productions of the 20th Century, are more focused on the physical and visual aspects of public space, and activity patterns regulated by the designer’s vision of ideal societal behavior. Time, on the other hand, has shown that most of such planned spaces have performed differently, transforming in response to market forces and users’ predilections, thus highlighting the indispensable need for inclusiveness in urban design.