Write a note on the town planning of Harappan civilization period.

Layout and materials

• Mature Harappan cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Kalibangan, Dholavira, Rakhigarhi, and Lothal follow a broadly orthogonal street plan with blocks of houses.
• Many sites show a raised citadel or acropolis and a lower residential town, which points to civic control of space rather than a purely organic village.
• Standard baked bricks in ratios near 1:2:4, together with mud brick and stone at Dholavira, made walls, platforms, and drains repeatable across the Indus–Sarasvati belt.
• Houses opened on lanes, not always on the main street, and often had an inner courtyard, a well, and a bathing platform, which is domestic planning, not only monumental planning.

Drainage, water, and public works

• Covered drains along streets, soak-pits, and house outlets form the most distinctive civic feature; rain and household water were meant to leave the street, not stand on it.
• The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro, with bitumen-lined brick, is a public water structure; granaries or warehouse blocks at Harappa and the dock-like basin at Lothal show storage and trade in the same planned fabric.
• Dholavira’s reservoirs and rock-cut water channels, and Kalibangan’s ploughed field and fire-altars, show that planning was regional, not a single photocopy of Mohenjo-daro.
• Fortification walls, gateways, and the absence of palaces or large temples on the Egyptian or Mesopotamian scale suggest a civic rather than a king-centred skyline.

Limits of the picture

• Archaeology still debates whether the citadel housed priests, merchants, or a collective elite; town planning proves order, not a named constitution.
• Late Harappan shrinkage and the drying of some river courses show that the planned city was not immortal, even where brick technology survived.