DOI: 10.5176/2425-0112_UPPD18.150
Authors: Abhilash Kolluri, Akshita Vasudev, Anupama Sharma, Saurabh Popli and Apurvi Maheshwari
Abstract: The paper investigates the popular lakefront at Bhopal, as a locus of social meanings and emotive content and advances a framework for understanding its significance. Bhopal is an important city—with a population of 1.8 million, it is the 17th largest city in India that has prominence as a geographic and cultural center of India. Its widely recognized image centers on its 1000-year-old man-made lake, the Bhoj Tal. This landscape has important social, cultural, aesthetic, biodiversity, ecological-services among other values. In addition, the lakefront also is a powerful setting with salient, yetunexplained, affective relationality between “places” and the users. In the context of rapid urbanization, the Bhopal lakefront has undergone significant changes in recent years and this paper explores how the landscape is constituted in the imagination of citizens. The paper attempts to redress the lacuna in our understanding of the affective aspects of the place, with reference to the Bhopal's lakefront. Using an interdisciplinary framework for assessment, drawn from current scholarship, the paper invokes important ‘Place’- concepts to explain the emotional power of this landscape.
Keywords: Bhopal, Upper Lake, affect, lakefront, edge, landscape, spaces
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