ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Railway Landscape and Urban Marginalisation

Indian cities, in the last few years, have shown substantial inclination towards rail-based transit-oriented development as a tool to make them more competitive in terms of liveability, at a global scale. Against this backdrop, a brief discussion on the need to rethink TOD policies in the country is undertaken. The article argues for an inclusive urban policy and governance practice. It argues that the TOD, which is essentially a neo-liberal Western notion of urban regeneration, needs to be substantially metamorphosed.

India’s Weird (Wired) Smart City

The skylines of Indian cities are cluttered with unregulated and often murderous cables, snagging our dreams of smart cities.

The Changing Face of New Towns in India

The concept of greenfield new towns is as old as civilisation in the Indian subcontinent. Socio-spatial equity has been at the core of the new town experiment during its origin in the Garden City movement. India has witnessed the new town wave post 1947, with the unstated mandate to serve the constitutional “common good,” in order to address the ills of the colonial inheritance of the divided city. The Indian new town has undergone major changes towards a more exclusive private enclave. The statutory planning discourse in India through the national five-year plans, which have helmed socio-economic–political planning, as well as the evolutionary curve of this discourse holds reasons for the changing face of new towns in India.

Mainstreaming Urban Resilience in India

In the recent decades, India is witnessing an explosive growth rate in urbanisation and its associated vulnerability to disasters. Disaster management in India has district as the basic unit, while city as a complex system requires different strategies. The city civic authorities need to explore mechanisms to increase their resource allocations for disaster management as well as to bring in the enhanced skills of both institutions and community.

 

Affordable Rental Housing Complexes Scheme and Private Rental Housing in Indian Cities

Intended or not, projects under the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes scheme will compete with private rental housing options in Indian cities. Examining the scheme guidelines and using data from the National Sample Survey Office, this article establishes the dimensions of this competition, and the chances of ARHC projects to participate in the `1.2 lakh crore rental housing market in urban India. ARHC projects could have better quality/rent ratios as compared to private rental housing. However, their profit-centred models will face locational and management disadvantages, and also reduce tenure security, leading to lack of demand and limited outcomes.

 

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