“Walk across Chandigarh and you sense order; walk across Delhi and you feel centuries of growth.”
1. Two Cities, Two Stories
Ever wondered what makes that difference? The answer lies beneath your feet — in the very patterns of the streets you walk on.
Two Indian cities, two entirely different blueprints of urban life.
Chandigarh emerged fully formed from the drawing boards of Le Corbusier — a city where geometry wasn’t just design, but governance. Streets don’t meander; they march. Buildings don’t just exist; they align.
Delhi, in contrast, grew like a living organism — layers of Mughal elegance, British planning, and modern sprawl woven together over time.
What’s fascinating is that both approaches work. Millions navigate these cities daily, each in its own way.
But to understand how, we need to look deeper — into their hidden framework of streets.
2. The Map That Reveals the City’s Soul
Using OpenStreetMap data processed with Python’s OSMnx library, this visualization uncovers the street DNA of each city.
Street networks are like urban fingerprints — every city has its own distinct pattern that reveals its character.
With today’s open data and tools, we can visualize these patterns with remarkable precision.
Using OpenStreetMap and Python’s OSMnx library, we extracted and mapped the complete street networks of Chandigarh and Delhi.
What unfolds on the map is a story of two philosophies.
Chandigarh’s grid glows with clarity — deliberate, uniform, predictable. It’s a city that breathes in diagonals, reflecting a belief in order and symmetry.
Delhi’s streets, by contrast, form a kaleidoscope — tangled yet rich with lived history, adaptation, and resilience.
3. Uncovering the Skeleton of Movement
Major roads reveal the planned skeleton of Chandigarh versus the organic arterial system of Delhi.
Major roads form the circulatory system of a city — they determine how people and goods flow.
When we isolate these roads, the difference becomes even more striking.
Chandigarh’s arterial network is a geometric masterpiece — broad avenues laid out in perfect rhythm, designed for even access and smooth mobility.
Delhi’s skeleton, on the other hand, tells a story of continuity — ancient routes turned Mughal processional ways, later reshaped by British planners, and now adapted to modern traffic.
This is why navigating Chandigarh feels predictable, while Delhi demands what locals call “street sense” — an intuition shaped by years of living within its layered geography.
4. When Numbers Tell the Deeper Story
Street orientation patterns reveal Chandigarh’s strong grid alignment vs Delhi’s multi-directional organic growth.
The rose diagrams reveal each city’s directional personality — Chandigarh’s bars shoot out like compass needles, aligned almost exclusively along NE–SW and NW–SE axes.
Delhi’s orientation rose is a tapestry of time, with bars pointing in every direction, reflecting centuries of layered growth.
Key urban metrics comparing Chandigarh and Delhi — Gridness, Dead Ends, and Median Segment Length.
Chandigarh scores high on gridness, with short block lengths and evenly distributed intersections.
Delhi shows higher variation but richer connectivity through organic branching.
The surprising insight? Despite structural differences, both achieve similar intersection density—about 86 intersections per square kilometre.
Both are equally connected, even if they feel worlds apart in design.
5. Why This Matters — Beyond the Maps
Roundabouts in Chandigarh vs Intersections in Delhi — A Tale of Two Urban Logics
These invisible patterns shape how we live our everyday lives.
Street layouts influence not just movement, but memory, commerce, and community identity.
In Chandigarh, the grid delivers:
- Predictable travel times — every route has logic.
- Equal access — all neighbourhoods connect easily.
- Ease of navigation — visitors can orient themselves quickly.
In Delhi, the organic web provides:
- Distinct neighborhood character — no two areas feel alike.
- Adaptive resilience — the city evolves without full redesign.
- Historical continuity — ancient paths remain active arteries.
6. The Takeaway: Every City Tells a Story
“Urban planning is not just design — it’s memory, adaptation, and human behavior mapped onto the ground.”
Both Chandigarh and Delhi succeed — not because one is right and the other wrong, but because each reflects a different philosophy of human settlement.
One is drawn with a ruler — a city of compass needles and diagonals.
The other is written by time — a kaleidoscope of paths shaped by memory.
This analysis only scratches the surface. With open-source geospatial tools (GIS) and open data, we can go further — exploring how street patterns influence accessibility, business clusters, and land values. Integrating Earth Observation (EO) data adds another dimension, revealing how urban form relates to heat islands, green space, and air quality.
For urban planners, transport engineers, and policymakers, such GIS-driven insights reveal how design choices shape mobility, equity, and sustainability — offering data-driven pathways to reimagine cities of the future.
Next time you walk through your city, pause for a moment.
Look down the streets, the turns, the intersections — you’re not just seeing asphalt and traffic.
You’re tracing a living blueprint — one that reveals how your city thinks, grows, and remembers.
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