In wake of JNNURM, urban design takes centrestage at SPA
Indian Express

With massive funds being pumped into over 60 cities across the country under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, a group of qualified and professional urban designers have come forward to ensure that cities are planned in a systematic manner.
Headed by Professor K T Ravindran, head of the department of urban design at the School of Planning and Architecture, the Institute of Urban Designers, India (IUDI) was formally launched by Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal on Saturday afternoon.

Sibal urged city planners to look at design in a holistic manner to avoid planning failures such as those in Delhi. “People who designed Delhi should have been aware of the kind of demographic trends that would take place but unfortunately that did not happen. Instead, what has happened in Delhi is symptomatic of a huge planning failure,” Sibal said.

He also gave assurances that the Ministry of Science and Technology would ensure the IUDI had access to “data at the micro level”.

He listed the example of Shahjahanabad, where by means of technology, the government is able to track every small modification in existing structures and thereby efficiently monitor property tax.

Also present on the occasion was renowned theatre personality Ebrahim Alkazi. “What we create now is not only for ourselves but for future generations as well and therefore tremendous responsibility, both moral and material, lies on those who create the spaces we live in,” Alkazi said as he urged city planners to work on an “integrated planning” system.

“We must avoid at all costs such chaotic conglomeration of styles,” Alkazi said. Renowned academician and urban designer B V Doshi presented the keynote address on the occasion.