Bussy Street separates the iconic Cour d’Appel from a modest government office where it intersects the beachfront Goubert Avenue with its assemblage of historic landmarks in Puducherry. The two-storey, Grade II A heritage structure, built in 1870, is currently enveloped in scaffolding but even the dense grid of casuarina poles cannot hide its majesty. The Smart City Mission office across the road is one of the reasons this estimated ₹5 crore restoration project of the old court building will eventually be reborn as a law museum and library.
Retro future
Smart Cities are generally perceived as urban agglomerations stepping ambitiously into a modern and ‘developed’ future, more easily visualised in concrete and steel than lime and mortar. But Puducherry's submission for the third round of the Smart City challenge, which closed on March 31, acknowledges the role of its thriving heritage.
“The proposal has to answer the question: ‘how are the people of the city benefited?’” says Dr. M. Dhinadhayalam, deputed as Officer on Special Duty to the Puducherry Smart City Mission from the Ministry of Urban Development.
Puducherry’s proposal bats for non-motorised transport, a public transit corridor, an intelligent traffic management and a cycle sharing network. With little by way of industries and few natural resources, the proposal also recommends 'smart tourism' by turning the old jail into a multi-level car park; a disused distillery revived as a hub for arts and culture; an ‘urban entertainment village’ at the old port; and the reconstruction of the 144-year old Mairie town hall building, which collapsed in the heavy rain of November 2015.
The proposal additionally says Puducherry’s beach promenade should be extended on both ends by 1.7 km; streetscapes spruced up; a three kilometre stretch of the Grand Canal beautified with pedestrian pathways and street furniture; and ‘eco-tourism’ enabled in the defunct Swadeshi Mill compound, also the site of an upcoming 2.5 lakh sq.ft government administrative complex.
Apart from protecting historic institutions such as the Calve College and the Pensinnat de Jeunes Filles, the Smart City proposal supports the restoration of the first list of 21 government-owned buildings notified in June 2016 by the State Level Heritage Conservation and Advisory Committee (SLHAC), which range from the Government Maternity Hospital to the old Light House and includes the Cour d’Appel, at an estimated cost of ₹80 crore.
Few remember that Puducherry was the first to submit its Smart City proposal in July 2015, less than a month after the BJP government at the Centre announced the scheme for an initial list of 100 cities on June 25, 2015. But it did not make the cut in the first two rounds (Bhubaneswar famously topped the first list; 60 cities have secured approval so far).
Puducherry's first two proposals recommended developing greenfield projects in its less-known municipality of Ozhukarai. Project costs were estimated at about ₹10,000 crore in the first round, then downsized to about ₹6,000 crore in the second, though the approach remained largely similar. The third proposal takes, as Dr. Dhinadalayam says, “A totally new look at the city's vision for itself.”
Cost-effective
The Smart City Mission says Puducherry will focus on retrofitting and redeveloping an area of about 1,468 acres in the boulevard town and its surroundings, based on direct feedback from 1.6 lakh citizens. The third round proposal is budgeted at less than a fifth of the cost of the first, at an estimated ₹1,800 crore.
“Earlier, tourists used to pass by Puducherry on the way from Mahabalipuram to Thanjavur. Today, we have large numbers of young spenders from as far away as Bombay and Delhi, who stay at least for two to three days, with a choice of about 20 boutique heritage hotels,” says Ashok Panda, co-convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), which wasa core member of the committee that drafted the third Smart City proposal. INTACH has been instrumental, over the past 17 years, in developing what restoration architects now call the 'Pondicherry Style'.
In the leafy Rue Suffren stands a silent building, old and oddly peaceful. French tourists come looking for it with their guide bleu (guidebook) in hand and identify it by the legend over its faded yellow arch. ‘E. Maghry,’ it says, ‘1891’. This was Puducherry’s first hotel, the Grand Hotel d’Europe. Sources say it changed hands recently and the new owner intends to turn it into a hotel again. If the new Smart City proposal gets approved, its guests might enjoy cycle sharing as they go looking for the museum at the Cour d’Appel.
