Business of Sanitation
Reinventing urban sanitation through innovation Over half the world currently does not have access to safe sanitation, meaning they have a dirty unsafe toilet or no toilet at all, waste is left exposed and untreated, and disease can run rampant. Sanitation systems have been considered a costly public responsibility; however, this is strongly linked to […]
People’s Participation in City Planning: Bottom-up planning; Participatory Design; Consultative Practice – How do we generate inclusive and people-centric cities?
Delhi Development Authority is in the process of preparing the new master plan which will be applicable for a 20 year period from 2021- 41. As of March 2021, Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has organized very limited online public consultations where citizens, CSOs, and campaigns could raise their voices. These public consultations are a great […]
15th Finance Commission : Urban Local Bodies
Empowering Local Government? One of the important provisions of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments was mandating Central Finance Commission to look into the financial needs of rural and urban local bodies and to provide financial assistance to the consolidated funds of the States from the Union Government to help rural and urban local bodies. […]
Shelter, Protection and Gender
6 Stories of Female Architects Designing for Women and Children As long as the architectural profession stays largely impregnated by gender disparity and that humanitarian architecture is only a small part of the mainstream career path, we should pursue every effort to showcase what can shift this reality. As new challenges arise, with mass displacements, […]
Humanitarian Architecture
Why is it Relevant in a Post-Covid World? Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2019, more people were displaced by natural disasters than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal […]
Urban Poverty in Contemporary Cities- Day 2
The Determining Role of Land Policies and Instruments Discussions on urban poverty revolve around specific sites such as squatter settlements, resettlement colonies or public spaces that poorer groups use for their livelihoods. These discussions have focussed on the difficulties that poorer groups have to access housing and/or work to generate an income. Housing is dominantly […]
Urban Poverty in Contemporary Cities- Day 1
The Determining Role of Land Policies and Instruments Discussions on urban poverty revolve around specific sites such as squatter settlements, resettlement colonies or public spaces that poorer groups use for their livelihoods. These discussions have focussed on the difficulties that poorer groups have to access housing and/or work to generate an income. Housing is dominantly […]
Tao of Alternative architecture
Paraphrasing Cobb from Inception the movie— “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.” In this […]
Sustaining villages while the Country Urbanises
Approaches and Strategies to ensuring Development and Sustenance of rural settlements in India As per the World Bank estimates, 65.56% of South Asia was rural in 2019. While attending to the complex urban challenge there is undoubtedly a need to address challenges of the still large rural sector. “Delhi Declaration” submitted to the GoI in […]
Planning Education and Profession in the Global South
In the global south, particularly in countries like India, Indonesia and a few others, we are witnessing a paradoxical situation, where, despite rapid urbanization and higher vulnerabilities due to poverty and climate change, the role of planners and planning professionals have been declining steadily. With about 8000 towns and cities and about 400 million residents, India […]
