9 ms·

Kautilya Arthashastra and its relevance to Urban Planning Studies [pdf]

56 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I have been looking into various texts from all over the world. How can we design cities without understanding land use allocation? The second appalling modern development in city planning is the sewage system that empties human wastes into the water bodies. Yes, we have plants now that process our wastes. Is there a better way? What about composting toilets? Is there a way to make that a sensible practical option?
- unearth3d 6y ago
  Re composting toilets, there's a 4-story laboratory in Auckland NZ with a compost system - built 2004 (https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED0404/S00113/pm-opens-unique-green-science-building.htm https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED0404/S00113/pm-opens-uniqu...). Normally councils here are VERY stuck in the past but in this case they had no ability to pipe sewage (due to critical pipework already surrounding the building). The real main issue is councils and their consultants all being stuck in the past and not wanting to do anything new which many regard as a threat (I'm a designer/planner so see this every day). Money is the only way such people understand the world so we have to help people see that waste has a very high cost - polluted rivers and oceans cannot easily be repaired but as everyone owns them no-one has responsibility.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Thank you. I just finished reading the article. I am interested in designing small cities. The future is curt states but what we can start by creating self sustaining micro cities first? I am very disheartened by how we handle our waste water. I have also been reading about sewage systems in mohenjadaro and Greece and roman and Asia and India. http://indiafacts.org/best-practices-in-indic-hygiene-sanitation-and-environmental-protection/ http://indiafacts.org/best-practices-in-indic-hygiene-sanita... : quoting; [..] It is interesting that the miasma theory prevalent in Europe promoted the dumping of human waste into water bodies. According to this obsolete theory, diseases are caused by bad air or foul odours. The water closet or flush toilets were hailed by Londoners because it removed smells from housing in accordance with the miasma theory. Excreta was disliked only for its smell not for its potential to cause disease. The more it was dumped in the Thames, the safer the residents of London felt [16]. “The city’s sewer commissioners proudly noted the huge volume of human waste that the city’s toilets efficiently deposited into the river; twenty nine thousand cubic yards in the spring of 1848 and eighty thousand cubic yards by the winter of 1849.”[..] [..] However, it must be remembered that throughout history, the task of handling wastes and faeces has never been a dignified one. [18] Until as late as the 20th century, human excrement had to be removed physically from cesspits and privies in Europe. [16,18] The European lower-caste people who did the dirty job were called gongfermours (French) or gong farmers in English. [18] The gong farmers of England were only allowed to work at night, so they were also called nightmen. They came into respectable neighbourhoods in the dead of the night, emptied cesspits and carted away the wastes to the boundaries of the cities. They were required to live in certain areas at the fringes of the city and could not enter the city during daytime. There were severe penalties for breaking this rule. Even after water closets arrived on the scene, their contents flowed into cesspits for a long time and needed to be cleaned out by nightmen. [18][..] Also: https://www.harappa.com/blog/mohenjo-daro-street-drains https://www.harappa.com/blog/mohenjo-daro-street-drains And https://www.rwaag.org/sanitation https://www.rwaag.org/sanitation [..] Wastes in the house were collected in jars and carried by the maids to a pile by the front door of the house. Servants then carried the wastes to the fields to be spread out as fertilizer. Any elimination was then done into jars or pots. Such chamber pots can be identified by their low shape and the presence of a lid. This probably was the method used until near the Roman period when latrines were used. The Romans built continuously flushing latrines which had a stone with a hole in it mounted over a continuously flowing trough. The water was provided by an aqueduct and carried to well-built sewers. The Romans provide no treatment though, so the outlets to the rivers were quite polluted. This did keep their cities relatively clean. The Greek cities often dumped the waste into the streets. This practice was more prone to the spread of disease.[..]
lenitabinol 6y ago
I read Arthashastra last year and had mixed feelings about the book at the end. It has a Machiavellian-type determination for success but also holds fast to the belief that the circumstances of one's birth determines their potential. Certainly some wisdom in ancient writings but need to be taken with a grain of salt.
- haltingproblem 6y ago
  Life expectancy of a child born in [1][2]: Baltimore, MD: 72 Greenwich, CT: 89 Djamena, Chad: 53 I cannot argue that the children born in those three places have the same potential, everything else being equal. Even children born in the same place, the biggest predictor of "success" in the USA is not ability but wealth of parents [3]. Can we escape the geography and parental endowments of our birth to maximize our potential? Yes, that is the exception not the norm. On a good day, I would argue that escaping the constraints of our birth and maximizing our potential is the goal of civilization. But not today ;) [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... [2] https://qz.com/1462111/map-what-story-does-your-neighborhoods-life-expectancy-tell/ https://qz.com/1462111/map-what-story-does-your-neighborhood... [3] https://www.wnpr.org/post/georgetown-study-wealth-not-ability-biggest-predictor-future-success https://www.wnpr.org/post/georgetown-study-wealth-not-abilit...
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    The same people who call the five[1] greek-letter castes of Brave New World a dystopia[2] voluntarily sort themselves by five-digit postal codes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640 [1] already an increase over the traditional trinity of upper, middle, and working classes. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 [2] in part due to its solution for escaping geography and parental endowments?
    - haltingproblem 6y ago
      Things change but they still remain the same.
ycombonator 6y ago
“Wisdom” like this is responsible for horrific caste based discrimination in India where the “untouchables” can’t fetch water from the village well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pkphilip 6y ago
  Well said
danans 6y ago
I can't tell if the author sees it as a feature rather than a bug, but this basically describes the feudal system of land use, wherein the best areas are exclusively occupied by the priesthood, aristocracy, and their retainers, while the peasantry toils under their control outside the fortified walls. That shouldn't be a surprise because the text in question was written nearly 2,000 years ago. It's recommendations hold few lessons for the modern era except as a reminder of the inhumanity of the feudal system. Bear in mind that we only disposed of feudalism (though not completely) in the last few centuries.
- dragonsh 6y ago
  You are right this has been one of the issues with ancient texts. Lucky the last empire of this dynasty Ashoka went against this system and adopted Buddhism which is against this caste system in India and deride hierarchy based on birth. Obviously with successive empire and generations India has gone through many transformations. The India (Hindustan) as we know it today was united by Mughals (where it enjoyed the period of golden growth especially under Akbar and got the name Hindustan) and then carried on by Britishers. Later it became free India in 1947.
  - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
    There were large unitary empires in India before the Mughals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires_in_Ind... It even had a name before that: Bharat. And on Buddhism, unfortunately the story is more complex and not as rosy. Buddhism unfortunately still has/had sects and castes (as do even Christianity and Islam in India). Here is an article: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14500421.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14500421.pdf One of the outstanding examples of such an ideologisation of history of religion is the modern view of Buddhism. Developed by the Western colonialist Indology this ideology portrayed and still is portraying Buddhism as an rationalist-atheistic, anti-brahmanical, anti-caste and egalitarian religion - in contrast to Hinduism which is caricatured as idolatrous, casteistic and brahmanised. The aim of such an ideological interpretation is to demonstrate the alleged Western modernity of Buddhism and the alleged obscurantism of Hinduism." We want to dispute these asserted positions by empirico-historical reasons.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
This part I find interesting. Any comments/thoughts will be appreciated. (Begin cut and paste) From the perspective of understanding the principles of design, development and management of settlements, Kautilya prescribed that it is important to know the kind of urbanization he conceptu- alized. He mentions a well defined hierarchy of the urban centers and the administrative divisions. These divisions were based mainly on the size of population and were influenced by the resources available in the region and opportunities for economic development. The smallest division was a village consisting of each not less than a hundred families and not more than five hundred families of agricultural people with boundaries extending as far as a krósa (2,250 yards). Apparently Kautilya also envisioned certain quality of life for the inhabitants by specifying population density and kind of physical developments in various parts of the town. Further, in his policies on urbanization, Kautilya encourages migration to the countryside in order to prevent overcrowding into the cities. This ensured a control over population as well as building densities and thus also reduced the hazard risks in city centers. The policy might also have been implied on widely spreading out the population across the nation, not just concentration in particular cities or national capitals thus supporting integrated and comprehensive growth of the regions. However, such outward regions were essentially with well developed agrarian economy.(/end cut and paste)
- dragonsh 6y ago
  It’s ok to read this work for sake of knowledge and understanding nuances of society at that time and may be some lessons might be useful, but it can’t be the basis of modern planning. Any system based on gentrification and divisions of humanity based on caste might have been acceptable in old times, but cannot be a good basis for modern society. Level of planning and technology used today will be considered work of god in the era this book was written, so probably it also doesn’t make sense. It’s like the book “Art of war” by Sun Tzu, which wasn’t even followed by one of the most successful war strategist ZhuGe Liang (諸葛亮) in China, but a book which comes quite often in management study strategies, like Kautilya Arthshstra in India.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    It is very distressing and peculiar to me that you keep wanting to divert this into a post about caste. Please stop.

56 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

I have been looking into various texts from all over the world. How can we design cities without understanding land use allocation? The second appalling modern development in city planning is the sewage system that empties human wastes into the water bodies. Yes, we have plants now that process our wastes. Is there a better way? What about composting toilets? Is there a way to make that a sensible practical option?

unearth3d 6y ago
Re composting toilets, there's a 4-story laboratory in Auckland NZ with a compost system - built 2004 (https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED0404/S00113/pm-opens-unique-green-science-building.htm https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED0404/S00113/pm-opens-uniqu...). Normally councils here are VERY stuck in the past but in this case they had no ability to pipe sewage (due to critical pipework already surrounding the building). The real main issue is councils and their consultants all being stuck in the past and not wanting to do anything new which many regard as a threat (I'm a designer/planner so see this every day). Money is the only way such people understand the world so we have to help people see that waste has a very high cost - polluted rivers and oceans cannot easily be repaired but as everyone owns them no-one has responsibility.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Thank you. I just finished reading the article. I am interested in designing small cities. The future is curt states but what we can start by creating self sustaining micro cities first? I am very disheartened by how we handle our waste water. I have also been reading about sewage systems in mohenjadaro and Greece and roman and Asia and India. http://indiafacts.org/best-practices-in-indic-hygiene-sanitation-and-environmental-protection/ http://indiafacts.org/best-practices-in-indic-hygiene-sanita... : quoting; [..] It is interesting that the miasma theory prevalent in Europe promoted the dumping of human waste into water bodies. According to this obsolete theory, diseases are caused by bad air or foul odours. The water closet or flush toilets were hailed by Londoners because it removed smells from housing in accordance with the miasma theory. Excreta was disliked only for its smell not for its potential to cause disease. The more it was dumped in the Thames, the safer the residents of London felt [16]. “The city’s sewer commissioners proudly noted the huge volume of human waste that the city’s toilets efficiently deposited into the river; twenty nine thousand cubic yards in the spring of 1848 and eighty thousand cubic yards by the winter of 1849.”[..] [..] However, it must be remembered that throughout history, the task of handling wastes and faeces has never been a dignified one. [18] Until as late as the 20th century, human excrement had to be removed physically from cesspits and privies in Europe. [16,18] The European lower-caste people who did the dirty job were called gongfermours (French) or gong farmers in English. [18] The gong farmers of England were only allowed to work at night, so they were also called nightmen. They came into respectable neighbourhoods in the dead of the night, emptied cesspits and carted away the wastes to the boundaries of the cities. They were required to live in certain areas at the fringes of the city and could not enter the city during daytime. There were severe penalties for breaking this rule. Even after water closets arrived on the scene, their contents flowed into cesspits for a long time and needed to be cleaned out by nightmen. [18][..] Also: https://www.harappa.com/blog/mohenjo-daro-street-drains https://www.harappa.com/blog/mohenjo-daro-street-drains And https://www.rwaag.org/sanitation https://www.rwaag.org/sanitation [..] Wastes in the house were collected in jars and carried by the maids to a pile by the front door of the house. Servants then carried the wastes to the fields to be spread out as fertilizer. Any elimination was then done into jars or pots. Such chamber pots can be identified by their low shape and the presence of a lid. This probably was the method used until near the Roman period when latrines were used. The Romans built continuously flushing latrines which had a stone with a hole in it mounted over a continuously flowing trough. The water was provided by an aqueduct and carried to well-built sewers. The Romans provide no treatment though, so the outlets to the rivers were quite polluted. This did keep their cities relatively clean. The Greek cities often dumped the waste into the streets. This practice was more prone to the spread of disease.[..]

lenitabinol 6y ago

I read Arthashastra last year and had mixed feelings about the book at the end. It has a Machiavellian-type determination for success but also holds fast to the belief that the circumstances of one's birth determines their potential. Certainly some wisdom in ancient writings but need to be taken with a grain of salt.

haltingproblem 6y ago
Life expectancy of a child born in [1][2]: Baltimore, MD: 72 Greenwich, CT: 89 Djamena, Chad: 53 I cannot argue that the children born in those three places have the same potential, everything else being equal. Even children born in the same place, the biggest predictor of "success" in the USA is not ability but wealth of parents [3]. Can we escape the geography and parental endowments of our birth to maximize our potential? Yes, that is the exception not the norm. On a good day, I would argue that escaping the constraints of our birth and maximizing our potential is the goal of civilization. But not today ;) [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... [2] https://qz.com/1462111/map-what-story-does-your-neighborhoods-life-expectancy-tell/ https://qz.com/1462111/map-what-story-does-your-neighborhood... [3] https://www.wnpr.org/post/georgetown-study-wealth-not-ability-biggest-predictor-future-success https://www.wnpr.org/post/georgetown-study-wealth-not-abilit...
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The same people who call the five[1] greek-letter castes of Brave New World a dystopia[2] voluntarily sort themselves by five-digit postal codes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269640 [1] already an increase over the traditional trinity of upper, middle, and working classes. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24222905 [2] in part due to its solution for escaping geography and parental endowments?
  - haltingproblem 6y ago
    Things change but they still remain the same.

ycombonator 6y ago

“Wisdom” like this is responsible for horrific caste based discrimination in India where the “untouchables” can’t fetch water from the village well.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pkphilip 6y ago
Well said

danans 6y ago

I can't tell if the author sees it as a feature rather than a bug, but this basically describes the feudal system of land use, wherein the best areas are exclusively occupied by the priesthood, aristocracy, and their retainers, while the peasantry toils under their control outside the fortified walls. That shouldn't be a surprise because the text in question was written nearly 2,000 years ago. It's recommendations hold few lessons for the modern era except as a reminder of the inhumanity of the feudal system. Bear in mind that we only disposed of feudalism (though not completely) in the last few centuries.

dragonsh 6y ago
You are right this has been one of the issues with ancient texts. Lucky the last empire of this dynasty Ashoka went against this system and adopted Buddhism which is against this caste system in India and deride hierarchy based on birth. Obviously with successive empire and generations India has gone through many transformations. The India (Hindustan) as we know it today was united by Mughals (where it enjoyed the period of golden growth especially under Akbar and got the name Hindustan) and then carried on by Britishers. Later it became free India in 1947.
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  There were large unitary empires in India before the Mughals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires_in_Ind... It even had a name before that: Bharat. And on Buddhism, unfortunately the story is more complex and not as rosy. Buddhism unfortunately still has/had sects and castes (as do even Christianity and Islam in India). Here is an article: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14500421.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14500421.pdf One of the outstanding examples of such an ideologisation of history of religion is the modern view of Buddhism. Developed by the Western colonialist Indology this ideology portrayed and still is portraying Buddhism as an rationalist-atheistic, anti-brahmanical, anti-caste and egalitarian religion - in contrast to Hinduism which is caricatured as idolatrous, casteistic and brahmanised. The aim of such an ideological interpretation is to demonstrate the alleged Western modernity of Buddhism and the alleged obscurantism of Hinduism." We want to dispute these asserted positions by empirico-historical reasons.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

This part I find interesting. Any comments/thoughts will be appreciated. (Begin cut and paste) From the perspective of understanding the principles of design, development and management of settlements, Kautilya prescribed that it is important to know the kind of urbanization he conceptu- alized. He mentions a well defined hierarchy of the urban centers and the administrative divisions. These divisions were based mainly on the size of population and were influenced by the resources available in the region and opportunities for economic development. The smallest division was a village consisting of each not less than a hundred families and not more than five hundred families of agricultural people with boundaries extending as far as a krósa (2,250 yards). Apparently Kautilya also envisioned certain quality of life for the inhabitants by specifying population density and kind of physical developments in various parts of the town. Further, in his policies on urbanization, Kautilya encourages migration to the countryside in order to prevent overcrowding into the cities. This ensured a control over population as well as building densities and thus also reduced the hazard risks in city centers. The policy might also have been implied on widely spreading out the population across the nation, not just concentration in particular cities or national capitals thus supporting integrated and comprehensive growth of the regions. However, such outward regions were essentially with well developed agrarian economy.(/end cut and paste)

dragonsh 6y ago
It’s ok to read this work for sake of knowledge and understanding nuances of society at that time and may be some lessons might be useful, but it can’t be the basis of modern planning. Any system based on gentrification and divisions of humanity based on caste might have been acceptable in old times, but cannot be a good basis for modern society. Level of planning and technology used today will be considered work of god in the era this book was written, so probably it also doesn’t make sense. It’s like the book “Art of war” by Sun Tzu, which wasn’t even followed by one of the most successful war strategist ZhuGe Liang (諸葛亮) in China, but a book which comes quite often in management study strategies, like Kautilya Arthshstra in India.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  It is very distressing and peculiar to me that you keep wanting to divert this into a post about caste. Please stop.