[fakedang]

Bangalore today is a shadow compared to the Garden City it once was.

For outsiders not in the know, Bangalore was famous for its beautiful lakes and the lush greenery around them. It was absolutely something else, finding these beautiful water bodies smack in the middle of what is supposed to be a major city. The weather was cool, almost like a warm European summer (which is extremely cool by Indian standards).

Then they got greedy, drained the lakes, built real estate and office properties on them and now Bangalore is an unbearable cesspit just like any other Indian city. Bad weather, bad traffic and a shit scenery.

I still have some photos of my visits to Bangalore in my childhood a couple of decades back, and the visual contrast between past and present is so stark. Of course, locals love to resent the regression of the city, but they also love their coin.

[intended]

Hey, Mumbai folks will fight you for supremacy on bad scenery. Course we concede the actual crown to our dearest friends in Delhi.

[fakedang]

I'll be honest, Mumbai is still very scenic, and I say that as someone from Kerala. Marine Drive and the Colaba area really have a very Bombay-days vibe even after all the changes in the area. While Sealink does ruin the sea views a bit, it's still not a grotesque mark on the scenery.

To be honest, my only relatively poor experience in Bombay in terms of scenery was in the Four Seasons hotel in Worli, when I could get a nice view of couples going at it on the rooftops of the chawl nearby, somehow appropriately from my bathroom window.

Delhi does have its own charms too. Assuming you're a strong enough male, it's worth exploring South Delhi on foot solo over autumns, winters and spring, just immersing in the city. Obviously face mask recommended and not recommended for ladies.

[anon291]

My family is part of the indigenous people of Mumbai, and my mom and dad's pictures of their childhood homes and stories are almost unbelievable if you visit now. My grandparents old bungalow is still on google maps, now surrounded by skyscrapers, but in the pictures, it's all fields and trees.

[Sammi]

I'm not usually not the type to be preoccupied with green policy, but this was heart wrenching to hear.

[tonyhart7]

"Then they got greedy, drained the lakes, built real estate and office properties on them and now Bangalore is an unbearable cesspit just like any other Indian city. Bad weather, bad traffic and a shit scenery."

hope indian government turn around, because china back then has a smoke problem even in its capital too

its hard to fought stigma but its not impossible

[hammock]

I had no idea and thank you for sharing. Why did it fall apart?

[YouAreRONGS]

If you want an alternative view, the state government has to largely spend money on infrastructure and welfare for non-Bengaluru voters who comprise the majority of the population and the vast majority of the land area, so often all the money that flows into Bengaluru doesn't get spent in Bengaluru itself but instead the wider state.

I also think that there's a strong overcurrent of people wanting to emulate US living standards in a city that's simply designed for a different way of living, more similar to other dense cities in East Asia or maybe even Europe. You need to have skyscrapers and not large low rise estates for example.

[rramadass]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712811

[momojo]

Source: Grad student from Bengalaru I got lunch with.

It became India's Silicon Valley. Acecnture. Infosys. Western IT money came pouring in and never stopped.

https://www.businessinsider.com/india-silicon-valley-bengalu...

[skavi]

Fittingly, I’ve heard [0] a similar transformation happened to Silicon Valley itself. Apparently it used to be a bunch of orchards.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/10672gn/til_before...

[YouAreRONGS]

I blame a lot of the cesspoll nature of Bengaluru on over-obsession with living a Silicon Valley lifestlye in the middle of a very dense city. Bengalurians should have been copying East Asian lifestyles where cities which have ancient dense cores rather than the suburban sprawl lifestyles that the US offers. A lot of the architectural and socio-cultural concepts are also much more similar to East Asia than they are to the US.

[fakedang]

Perhaps there will be a return to the roots. The new redesign of Bangalore airport is very much in line with an East Asian vision and I hope that carries over into the rest of the city. That being said, I'll still bemoan the loss of the lakes.

[YouAreRONGS]

It surprised me that tech companies opted for Silicon Valley style campuses rather than Chinese stytle skyscrapers. It's not feisable to live a Bay Area lifestyle in a city surrounded by mountains like Bengaluru. You would not have to build over lakes if you built up.