Para, Adda and Residents of Kolkata: Need for Design of New Neighbourhoods Accommodating Cultural Legacies

Abstract

Para in Kolkata refers to an informal, organic and urban residential unit, which is the origin point of the significant socio-cultural activity of adda—a social informal talk, usually done in Bengali, among friends, colleagues and even family members, tied to intellectual or current affairs topics. Conducted mainly in public spaces within residential areas, adda and other social interactions in a para are essentially stimulated by their organic design, which in turn, is dictated by the needs of the inhabitants. To accommodate the rising population and in response to the current socio-economic aspirations of the citizens, new neighbourhoods are being developed in Kolkata, which mostly follow the modern design principle of segregation. Due to the segregation of activities, the nature of these neighbourhoods is introverted and exclusionary, reducing social cohesiveness by discouraging social interactions and is detrimental for the mental and physical health of the inhabitants. The study aims to highlight the necessity for extending the socio-cultural legacies of old neighbourhoods of Kolkata into the new ones to address the emotional and social needs of its residents through an alternative approach for neighbourhood design. The study establishes the emotional and social needs of the residents through interviewing the residents of the paras and new neighbourhoods and employing content analysis to analyse them. The key objectives of the study are to establish the need for extending the cultural legacies of paras to the city’s new neighbourhoods and evolve a design philosophy to encourage inclusivity and social interaction within the new neighbourhoods.