Urban Planning and its Discontents

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.