Mapping a megacity’s metabolism
This is the second in a series of articles about Harvard’s interdisciplinary work at the Kumbh Mela, a religious gathering that every 12 years creates the world’s largest pop-up city. ALLAHABAD, India — If you wanted to jury-rig your own local version of Google Maps, you might end up with something like the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) team gathered one January morning, already sweltering under the rising Indian sun. But GSD professor Rahul Mehrotra and his colleagues and students were going where Google hasn’t, into the heart of the Maha Kumbh Mela, India’s “ephemeral city,” an impressive grid of colorful, tent-lined streets that pops up every 12 years to accommodate the world’s largest gathering of Hindu pilgrims. Instead of using a “Street View” van to capture the 360-degree sweep of the city’s streets, the graduate students would be deployed to take panoramic shots on DSLR cameras. And in lieu of high-resolution...