Grad School Application Essay

As a first generation Indian-American, I am no stranger to being a part of a distinct community while observing two unique cultures. Traveling to India exposed me to a dynamic population with rich diversity comprising of numerous languages and differing religions. Though these individuals may have had differing customs from their neighbors, there were similar ambitions to conquer grinding poverty. This poverty can be clearly noticed by seeing citizens sleeping on floors of a railway station, or the lack of air conditioning in searing hot weather. The frailty and mortality of the human condition was starkly visible in India. As a fellow human, I was humbled not only by the lack of privilege and opportunity of many citizens, but also by their

Small roads with interconnecting patterns of streets and sidewalks within the complex, instead of huge highways surrounding and isolating them, began to be greatly favoured. However, New Urbanism, too, like all other architectural styles had its drawbacks. Alex Marshall, a journalist, argued that New Urbanism was essentially a grand fraud, a gimmick, a marketing scheme that repackaged the conventional suburban sprawl behind the façade of nostalgic imagery and empty aspirational slogans. In some cases that adopted this style, the span of the complex was so large, that providing only pedestrian pathways was not feasible and reliance on automobile was constructed. In other cases, automobiles were allowed inside the complex, maybe a bit too liberally, forcing the design to lose its essence. Also, some so-called New Urbanist designs implement the strategy of segregating spaces according to function and the connecting them through a couple of bridges plonked here and there. So, these towns only wear the veil of a New Urbanist town whereas it is actually following the hundred-and-fifty-year old prototype of an urban

Urbanization is inevitable, whether we want it or not. Opposers are constantly bickering about the political and moral consequences of gentrification. This topic is indeed mind boggling and complex. However, there is a need to observe this multi-faceted phenomenon in a different angle. Change is the force of diversity, safety and

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

Poverty and oppression is a serious condition that is prevalent even in today’s modern society. Women and children are exposed to poverty and subjected to a life of injustice. One of the countries where such problems still occur is in India. Despite the country’s modernization, there lies an undercity where the disparity of wealth is transparent. These social problems are thoroughly described in movies and literature such as Slumdog Millionaire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo, the author describes slum life for a set of individuals and the hardship that their social conditions confined them to. Another movie that gave insight to slum life in India is Slumdog Millionaire

In the novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Indian paupers live in Annawadi slum, a place where is descried as “a bitty slum popped up in the biggest city of a country that holds one third of the planet’s poor.” (Boo, 3) Poverty–a lack of wealth and basic needs–influences every single part of people’s lives and stories, just likes to stalk people documented in the book like a nightmare. In Annawadi slum, poverty is nearly unavoidable and inescapable. There is no running water, no relief services, and the people do not take care of what they have, because they can barely afford to take care of themselves. This harsh circumstance reveals the fact that further advances in human welfare for the poor are now often threatened by a belief in the West

In the nonfiction book written by Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, the title holds significant meaning. The reason behind this is explored within the first chapter, “Personal Geography,” as it concisely represents why Mehta chose this as the name of his work (3). Through the telling of his history in Bombay as a child and his rediscovery of it coming back as an adult, Mehta sets the stage for an in-depth description of this city and its nature throughout the rest of the book. This transformation from an insider to the culture of the city, to an outsider, to a potential insider is the essence of this first chapter, and overall the inspiration that Mehta uses to write this book. He makes the reader understand that this act of recording all of this information about Bombay is not to only to educate the reader, but also to educate and reacquaint himself with his city. Through immersing himself in the culture and the lifestyle, he finally receives the citizenship that he lost when he was a child and has been desiring since then.

This dissertation is influenced by the ongoing urban regeneration and urban developments in many of the major cities in India, especially in city of Pune, and its adverse effects on the city townscapes and place identities. City of Pune has a rich education legacy and has been often referred as the ‘Oxford of the East’, a legacy which came into prominence on the establishment of the University of Pune in the year 1949 (Hindustan Times, 2012). The city truly justified itself as the cultural capital of Maharashtra with its strong connections with the work of arts, music, theater and literature (Hindustan Times, 2012). Pune, being an educational hub of India by having one of the India’s oldest University (Maharashtra Tourism, 2013), has now been transformed into a major manufacture and production hub as well as has improved in educational sectors like research institutes for information technology, management, architecture and engineering that attract students and professionals internationally (SCHEMCON, 2015).

The book Concepts of Urban Design by David Gosling and Barry Maitland has stated that, “History provides a large number of traditional urban forms which have survived the passage of time and which work to a greater or lesser degree. (Gosling & Maitland, 1984).” This statement provides some evidence to show that even professionals in the planning world recognise and base some urban designs on ‘traditional urban forms’. Examples of this range from

If someone asked me where I am going to be in ten years, this would be my answer. I will have a great, high-paying job, and beautiful wife and family, and a nice sports car parked in front of my lovely house. When I look into the future, I see myself being successful and happy. Even though I always pictured myself this way, I never worried too much about how I would get there. I feel the Suffolk University can lay the groundwork for making these dreams into reality.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

This essay will explore the contemporary water crisis in Mumbai, India; a rapidly growing megacity that for decades has struggled to provide adequate access to water for their 20 million residents, and in particular the more than 10 million people living in unsanctioned self-erected slum communities that surround the city proper. Beyond the technical and structural barriers lie ideological and cultural impediments that I will argue are borne in part from an idealized quest for modernity informed by free market capitalism and neoliberal ideology. I will argue that this has created deep cultural and societal rifts that have been exploited by vested economic interests through discursive and political campaigns that seek to delegitimize the right of Mumbai’s citizens to water, and by extension life. The spectre of climate change provides a backdrop for an existential struggle that has been unfolding for decades and appears likely to continue. This essay will examine the circumstances and failures that preceded the 2014 landmark ruling handed down by the High Court of Mumbai which affirmed the inalienable right to water, regardless of legal status of one’s domicile, including attempts to privatize water services in various regions of the city.

This same logic leads not just towards generalized urban agglomeration but to the emergence of multiple dense industrial districts within the metropolis. The internal production spaces of large cities are composed of mosaics of particular kinds of industrial land use focused on localized nodal clusters comprising activities that range from manufacturing to office and service functions. For example, gun and jewellery manufacturing in Birmingham, England; footwear industry of East London; clothing production of New York City; motor-vehicle industry of Tokyo; and office functions in modern metropolis illustrate different aspects of the theory of industrial organization and location. They represent especially clear cases of the internal specialization of parts of the production space of the large metropolis. As such, they illustrate both, the generality of the problem of agglomeration and the wide diversity of concrete forms that it can assume under different conjectural circumstances.

Designing a city from scratch is a remarkable thought experiment but ultimately fails at implementation because we always approach it from the perspective of “how can we create a new city that solves problems of existing cities.” It’s less a process driven by design and more by critique. Urban living has paved its way into modern society, yet the vision for a city has changed over time. Large settlements need planning to grow; yet differences in minds is what leads to the modifications of a city, in return makes a city so unique. Alterations in opinions are what thrives urban life, still these differences are what skews the view of how others see a city compared to myself. They say the eye of the beholder deems beauty; this could explain

Kevin lynch’s book ‘Good city form’ gives us the answer of the question that what are the factors and aspects which makes good city and how to achieve it as cities are too complicated objects, they are far beyond the control, and they also affect the too many people with too many cultural variations. The book provides knowledge of various urban theories through comprehensive discussions.