Maha Kumbh Mela now a HARVARD case study!!

New York: The Maha Kumbh Mela,
considered the largest public
gathering in the world, will be the
subject of a case study at Harvard
University, which will study the
logistics and economics behind it
and the "pop-up mega-city"
that comes to life in Allahabad
during the religious event. A team
of faculty and students from
Harvard's Faculty of Arts and
Sciences (FAS), School of Design,
Harvard Business-School, School
of Public Health, Harvard Medical
School, Harvard Divinity School
and Harvard Global Health
Institute would travel to
Allahabad for the project
'Mapping India's Kumbh Mela'.
They would undertake different
researches at the Maha Kumbh,
which draws millions of pilgrims
from across the world every 12
years. Harvard said a temporary
"pop-up mega-city" is created for
the Kumbh Mela that would house
pilgrims and tourists for the over
month-long duration of the
religious gathering. "This city, laid
out on a grid, is constructed and
deconstructed within a matter of
weeks," it said.
Creating this huge encampment
entails multiple aspects of
contemporary urbanism,
including city planning and
management, engineering and
spatial zoning, an electricity grid,
water lines and sanitation
systems, food and water
distribution plans, hospitals and
vaccination centres, police and
fire stations, public gathering
spaces, and stages for
entertainments and plays, the
university said. "This is probably
the first time that Harvard is
doing something like this, where
we've pulled together...different
disciplines in a way that all
faculty and students are going to
be together to look at a
phenomenon," Associate Director
of Harvard's South Asia Institute,
Meena Hewett, said in a
statement.
The Harvard team would seek
answers to the "question of 'How
on earth is an event of this size
possible'," city-based writer
Logan Plaster, who would be part
of the team visiting the Kumbh
Mela, said. "To fully grapple with
this question, the scale of the
Kumbh needs to be put in
perspective". The Graduate School
of Design team would study the
Kumbh Mela as a case study for
the "pop-up mega-city" and
would map flows of people and
infrastructure. The FAS team
would look at various religious
and cultural aspects of the event,
including the kinds of religious
groups present at the festival,
devotional practices, tourism and
environmental concerns, while
the health team would study
water quality, sanitation
techniques, health clinic readiness
and presence and networks of
hospitals and public health
facilities.

posted from Bloggeroid