Through the story of Kathputli Colony, thiss essay; Creating Urbanity – Destroying Cultures, Relationships Between Public and Private in Kathputli Colony, New Delhi, India, discusses various degrees of public and private in urban architecture. It compares the architecture of the former Kathputli Colony with the new architecture proposed for the site.

Striving to become a “world class city”, Delhi has, through the Master Plan 2021, decided to raze all informal settlements and replace them with high-rises. Kathputli Colony was such an informal settlement; an urban environment built up by an architecture that responded to the needs and economic means of its inhabitants. Its design was the result of network connections and personal relationships merging public and private life.

The essay concludes that Kathputli Colony consisted of a heterogeneous architecture, that had more in common with pre-industrial urbanism and village-architecture, than with the modernist architecture of the high-rises with its clear separation between public and private, work and leisure.