Urban Planning and Its Discontents: Practice in Contemporary India

This book, the first of its kind, introduces various aspects of urban planning in India and contributes towards debates on changes required in the current practice. Urban planning in India means many things to city residents and is used generically to include all interventions in the cities, such as public policy design, institutional design, spatial and territorial plans, infrastructure plans, public administration, community participation, and their implementation through programmes, schemes, and projects. While urban planning is expected to meet the global development agendas of equitable and just urbanisation, climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs), in practice it has largely remained confined to statutory spatial planning represented by ’Master Plan’ or ’Comprehensive Plan’.

This volume delves into this world of urban planning as critical insiders to see how it works in India, analysing the city level spatial plans, the Master or Development Plans, of select cities to assess whether these are capable of addressing the global agendas and coordinate with all other plans prepared for the city. It examines whether it would work in reference to the contemporary issues, SDGs, and global agendas, and discusses strategies on how to make it work better. It also deals with each of the above stated criticisms of the practice and examines the debates, data, approaches, agendas, plans, and the future of urban planning in India.

This book comes in at a time when the urban planners and policy makers have themselves begun to discuss a need to relook at urban planning practices and tools to meet the future requirements of urbanisation in India. It will be a useful reference volume for the students, scholars and practitioners alike, and be of interest to researchers and students of urban planning, architecture, public administration, civil engineering, geography, economics, and sociology. It will also be useful for policy makers and professionals working in the areas of town and country planning.

Darshini Mahadevia is currently at School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University where she held the position of Associate Dean, Arts. She was Dean at the Faculty of Planning, CEPT University for one tenure and established and coordinated activities of the Centre for Urban Equity at CEPT University. She has worked on many national and international research projects related to housing, informal sector, urban employment, urban transport, public health, and climate change and has numerous publications to her credit. Her work has focused throughout on the issues of equity of caste, class, religion and gender, in urban policies and development.

Rutool Sharma, a civil engineer-planner by education, with 20 years of teaching, research and consultancy experience, has been a faculty at the CEPT University for more than 17 years. At CEPT University, she has mentored dissertation of more than 70 students, undertaken numerous research and consulting projects for both state and central governments in India. Prior to joining CEPT University, she worked as a senior planner and project head at renowned planning-architectural firm, Vastu Shilpa Consultants. Her research and consulting works are in areas of planning legislation, spatial planning, urban land management, real estate, and housing. She has also been engaged with practical spatial planning exercises, policy-oriented research including evaluating policies and programmes, and capacity-building activities. Her current interest is exploring urban planning from an interdisciplinary lens of sustainability and equity.