According to Tom Downey, the study of the holiest celebration in India and its planning could

help to urban planners and government to respond to urban expansion.

The choose festival was the Maha Kumbh Mela, which is celebrating each 12 years and it
gathers almost tens of millions of pilgrims from different parts of the country. It takes place at
the convergence of two important rivers, the Ganges and the Yamuna and a stream knowing
as Saraswati. As other India cities, the author expects to find a messy place with serious traffic
problems but enormous was his surprise because when he saw how the government and the
pilgrims had understood how to organize everything, mainly the pilgrims, whose use correctly
the infrastructure built for it years before. The organizers had learnt with the experience how
to give more commodities to the visitors, because in previous festivals the amount of crowds
had cause the death of many people. Example of this kind of changes made by government
was the expansion of the bathing area, because the bath is the most important ritual inside the
festival.
As the beginning the Tom doesnt understood how this festival could help to urban planners
but with the aim of a group of Harvard researchers from the universitys Graduate School of
design, he had the choose to see the festival from other perspective. And it permit him to see
in detail the design of different area such as the markets, the boulevards, places to meditate or
put up the tent.
Rahul Mehrotra, leader of designers highlighted the importance to give people a flexible
infrastructure which permits the setup of sanitation, transport and electricity.