The Indus Valley Civilization covered a large area around the Indus River basin and beyond in late Bronze Age India. In its mature phase, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, it produced several cities marked by great uniformity within and between sites, including Harappa, Lothal, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Mohenjo-daro.Planning of Indus valley civilization cities

Layout of Dholavira

Layout of Kalibangan

The drainage system at Lothal

Kalibangan pre-Harappan structures

The civic and town planning and engineering aspects of these are remarkable, but the design of the buildings is “of a startling utilitarian character”. There are granaries, drains, lombadthing, water-courses and tanks, but neither palaces nor temples have been identified, though cities have a central raised and fortified “citadel”.^[2] Mohenjo-daro has wells which may be the predecessors of the stepwell.^[3] As many as 700 wells have been discovered in just one section of the city, leading scholars to believe that ‘cylindrical brick lined wells’ were invented by the Indus Valley Civilization

Architectural decoration is extremely minimal, though there are “narrow pointed niches” inside some buildings. Most of the art found is in miniature forms like seals, and mainly in terracotta, but there are very few larger sculptures of figures. In most sites fired mud-brick (not sun-baked as in Mesopotamia) is used exclusively as the building material, but a few such as Dholavira are in stone. Most houses have two storeys, and very uniform sizes and plans. The large cities declined relatively quickly, for unknown reasons, leaving a less sophisticated village culture behind.^[4]

After collapse of mature harappan urban period, some cities still remained urban and inhabited. sites like Bet Dwarka in Gujarat, Kudwala(38.1 ha) in Cholistan and Daimabad (20 Ha) in Maharashtra are considered urban. Daimabad (2000–1000 BC) developed a fortification wall with bastions in its jorwe culture period (1400–1000 BC) and had public buildings such as an elliptical temple, an apsidal temple and shows evidence of planning in the layout of rectangular houses and streets or lanes and planned streets. The area had rose to 50 hectares in with a population of 10,000 people. A 580 meter long protection wall dated 1500 BC was found at Bet Dwarka which was believed to be damaged and submerged following sea storm