Darshini Mahadevia – författare

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.

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.

Sustainable energy and local resource security has led the government of Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to support grassroots innovations in the use of biomass on one hand and strengthen and introduce national level legislation to related to environmental pollution and sustainable natural resource use. The grassroots innovations have come through on account of the farmers’ desire to improve their working and living conditions, while innovative technologies for the use of locally available biomass. But, on a macro-level, these grassroots innovations have direct as well as indirect context of the national level policies and legislation. This book presents the national level policy framework on the sustainable use of biomass in China, presents macro situation of the biomass availability in the country and in the locales of the case studies, and macro-level situation of the grassroots innovations by the farmers related to the use of biomass. The book then presents detailed case studies of individual farmers’ innovations and the policy support they receive from the local government in line with the national government policies and programs.