The Dream
“It would be the place where the city descends. It would be an oasis. The idea here is that this is a magical space that takes people away from the humdrum of daily life.”
Ratish Nanda, project director for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and the driving force behind the dream of a mega-park
So what will this mega-park look like?
It would be 480 hectares (1,200 acres), considerably larger than Central Park. That park would start with Humayun’s Tomb (considered a 16th Century prototype for the Taj Mahal)and its complex of gardens and monuments. Just to the north is the nursery, then the national zoo, then the Purana Qila, the oldest fort in the city. It would have an ancient fort, a Buddhist stupa, flocks of exotic birds and white tigers in the zoo. Running alongside all this is the narrow Millennium Park, which borders the Yamuna River. These areas are so cut off now that a trip from Humayun’s Tomb to Millennium Park, only about 100 meters (yards) away, would take 5 1/2 kilometers (3 miles).
The dream is indeed beautiful, but it’s a long and rather ugly process bringing it to life. To merge a string of adjoining gardens, heritage areas and a zoo, all administered by different government agencies is an incredibly complicated task in a land where red tape is mass produced. The different bodies will have to step out of their comfort zones, merge boundaries and work in harmony
The work has started with the restoration of Sunder Nursery, a 40-hectare (100-acre) field adjacent to Humayun’s Tomb, both of which are being restored by the Aga Khan’s trust. In recent years, it became a dumping ground for construction waste. The trust fought back a government plan to cut the nursery in half — and destroy a garden tomb — to make way for a major road planned for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. It had to remove 1,000 truckloads of construction rubble scattered about the fields.
We’ll just have to wait and see if they can pull it off! Sure hope they do !
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