Robert D. Stephens is a Principal at RMA Architects, Mumbai. His passions include the art of building and constructing beauty through visual, literary, and cinematic imagery. In 2013 he co-produced a feature film with India's first You Tube star, Wilbur Sargunaraj, entitled "Simple Superstar".
The most unique feature of the photos is that they come with an index of the pollution levels in the city on the day that each picture was shot.
For this particular photo taken on May 2015 below were the details of the pollution level:
SO2 - 15 ug / m3
NO2 - 17 ug / m3
RSPM - 60 ug / m3
"The Special Housing Committee made one specific recommendation regarding the extension of the city boundaries, namely, that the Adyar area to the south of the existing city boundary (1935) should be included within municipal limits. This is a comparatively undeveloped area containing many acres of potential housing sites, and the recommendation that it should be included withinthe city's administration is sound. It is desirable that the city limits should be extended in advance of development. The tendency in Indian civic development has been for building to take place before the extension of administrative control, andwhen such extension ultimately takes place new slums have been incorporated within the city limits. The Madras Director of Town Planning has described this tendency as a 'fundamental error'. If the extension takes place before development the opposition of residents in the extension area does not arise.
Such an extension, implying the development of new housing areas on the fringes of the city will make imperative the rationalization of the present chaotic transport arrangements and soensure that cheap and efficient means of conveyance are available to all parts of the city."
A City in Transition
Page 139-140
C.W. Ranson
1938
About Madras Transit
After the mesmerising aerial photos of Mumbai in "Mumbai Articles", Robert D Stephens turns his bird's eye view on Chennai in his latest collection "Madras Transit".
Click links below to see his other collections:
Mumbai Articles Mumbai NorthThis urban metropolis has had many admirers-from Lady Callcott, an English travel writer who spent considerable time in India, ("I do not know anything more striking than the first approach to Madras..."), to the Indian writer and cartographer, S Muthiah, famous for his political and historical writings on the "city that is still open to the skies, a city that in some ways seems a rural town that has just kept spreading."
Stephen's homage to Chennai, one of the top 52 must-see places to feature in The New York Times, includes 24 aerial photographs in colour. From the geometric street grids of Anna Nagar, to the banks of the Adyar River and beyond, each image is accompanied by a record of air pollution levels on the corresponding day, as measured by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
Our one-of-a-kind collection is a compelling invite to wander the streets of a city rapidly shrinking under the onslaught of globalisation.