Planning Indian Cities

References:
Urban Heritage in Indian Cities- NIUA
Master Plans in India
• Evolution of Planning
• Indus Valley Civilization
• Mansara’s Shilpashastra and Kautilya’s Arthshastra
• Temple Towns
• Mughal era
Distinctive Features of the Ancient Settlements
• Settlements were dense
• Dynamic multiple usages of public spaces and individual properties thrived.
• Some form of neighbourhood system.
• Planning was well suited to people’s daily needs and cultural values.
• Building elements were coherent to climatic conditions.
• Makers paid close attention to siting civic amenities appropriately.
• Locally available building materials suited economic as well as environmental
• The individual building design and neighborhood’s physical layout varied substantially.
Master Plans in India
Why study pre-independence influences to understand the contemporary Indian city?
Planning During Colonial Period- City Planning in India under British Rule -Howard Spodek
∙ Constructed and reconstructed cities for reasons of governance, and to reduce threats posed by epidemics, was more
piecemeal and partial, hindered by indifference to the problems of indigenous zones of the city.
∙ Planning was restricted mainly to improvement schemes within the existing town or new schemes at the periphery.
∙ Comprehensive planning frameworks at that time did not exist anywhere in the world. Introduced concepts of urban
planning – based largely on emerging European ideals of health and sanitation: improved roads, spaciousness, order
and beautification.
∙ Enacted town planning and improvement trust acts, created primarily for the purpose of the expansion or
improvement of towns.
∙ On the other hand, municipal bodies, created under municipal acts, undertook functions like water supply, sanitation,
and public health. The colonial-era separation of development functions and maintenance functions continued in
independent India.
∙ Entrusted more power to appointed bureaucrats than to elected officials; subordination of city governments to state
and national authorities.
∙ Used eminent power especially for slum removal; followed policy of low taxes regardless of civic needs; and more
emphasis on impressive design and architecture for government and the elites than on the basic needs of the
ever-increasing immigrant urban masses.
• Improvement Trust, TP Scheme,
• Patrick geddes
• Lutyens's delhi
Master Plans in India
India – On Independence
• Bloody Traumatic Partition.
• Deep rooted poverty, massive lack of resources, and various kinds of dependencies characterized the nationwide depressing
situation.
• Illitracy many social ills, including the hierarchical caste system challenging the political leaders and planners of independent India.
• separate and discriminatory resettlements of refugees belonging to the lower castes.
India in Making
• The idea of one nation
• Focus of the Government was on modernization –a step towards prosperity and diminishing inequality.
• National Leaders aspirations -to create self-reliant country.
• the Nehruvian development model.
• national self-sufficiency through large-scale industrialization and modernization
• Inspired by the planning model of the USSR and other socialist countries-Planning Commission in 1950.
• Unlike the soviet bloc, however, India did not opt for complete state control over national resources.
• the rapid growth of one-lakh and million cities
• the stagnation and decline of small towns
• the massive growth of slums and the rural-urban fringe and
• the introduction of city planning and the general improvement in civic amenities.

Policy Outline of the first three Five year Plan- Paper by Lalit Batra and Report on Niti Ayog
Master Plans in India
India – On Independence –
• Modernist planning ideas -grand visions -standardization of planning norms -the comprehensive plans and new towns developed at
that time.
• Foreign influence- green belts, garden city and neighborhood
• functional zoning, the neighborhood unit concept, and the comprehensive master planning approach- authoritative control through
legal and institutional mechanisms over the use of land in urban areas
• cluster of new intellectual, social, economic, political, religious ideas and beliefs, which are substantially different from the traditional
system.
• Roles of science, reason, and an inherent belief in the idea of human progress.
• Industrialization- Backward Region
• large factories, heavy industries, monumental dams, and power plants representing the modern age.
• Required Sophisticated planning but also massive capital investments and resources like land, construction materials, and engineering
expertise.
Centralized planning in India at that time:
• widespread poverty,
• the attractiveness of the scientific approach for pursuing large-scale economic development,
• the desire to fulfll the idealistic goals and aspirations of a newly independent nation.
New Towns- Administrative, Industrial Refugees – Planning Approach and its implementation
Comprehensive development Plan- Overall structure –Complete evaluation- hierarchy of the spaces, basic unit –neighborhood
unit, relationship with the historical quarter
India’s post-independence urban landscape comprised a divergent range of places including historic settlements, colonial places, and
modernist new towns and city-extensions housing distinct communities and notably different subcultures.
Master Plans in India
Actual Implementation- The national response to urbanization comprising two main strategies:
• planned interventions (such as the development of satellite towns) to decongest the largest cities and attempts to defect the
growing urban population to small
• medium-sized cities through centrally sponsored programs --Integrated Urban Development Programme (IUDP) and
Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns (IDSMT).
• Moreover, the preparation of master plans remained restricted to the country’s largest cities. Most secondary and tertiary cities
continued to grow piecemeal.
• Even in cities with comprehensive plans, the requirements of housing and jobs far outpaced the limited institutional, financial,
and political capacities.
• Lacking basic shelter and productive jobs, promised on the eve of independence, poor households and working classes in local
places could hardly wait for the state plans to materialize; instead, they made their own plans, creating self-organized
communities at opportune locations
• The rapid emergence and substantial spread of various forms of ‘informalities’ that began to challenge formal planning efforts
across urban India.
• Uneven urbanization, primarily in metropolitan cities
Master Plans in India
• By the 1980s, the overall socio-spatial form of the contemporary Indian city had begun to come clear.
• Envisaged neatly ordered city by the first-generation master plans developed in the 1960-the Indian city comprised a ‘patchwork quilt’ of
differently planned areas such as the incipient informal settlements, regularized informal settlements, appropriated planned
neighborhoods, and unregulated developments on the urban periphery.
• ‘regularization,’.
• the spaces and activities not fitting the formal plans -‘regularized’ or occasionally demolished.
City Structure
• Old walled towns
• City extension
• Cantonment
• Civil lines
• Railway Colonies and
• Residential colonies and industrial units developed after 1947
• Urban Village
• Urban Edge

delineation of residential and commercial areas

CBD is not devoid of residential population
British period on morphology
unplanned growth of functional areas
haphazard skyline
absence of clear cut zonation of residential zones according to economic class:
suburban growth
Historical district and periphery
imprint of rural environment
Compare it with the growth of planned town
Master Plans in India
• By the 1980s, the overall socio-spatial form of the contemporary Indian city had begun to come clear.
• Indian city comprised a ‘patchwork quilt’ of differently planned areas such as the incipient informal settlements, regularized informal
settlements, appropriated planned neighborhoods, and unregulated developments on the urban periphery.
• ‘regularization,’.
• the spaces and activities not fitting the formal plans -‘regularized’ or occasionally demolished.
City Structure
• Old walled towns
• City extension
• Cantonment
• Civil lines
• Railway Colonies and
• Residential colonies and industrial units developed after 1947
• Urban Village
• Urban Edge

delineation of residential and commercial areas

CBD is not devoid of residential population
British period on morphology
unplanned growth of functional areas
haphazard skyline
absence of clear cut zonation of residential zones according to economic class:
suburban growth
Historical district and periphery
imprint of rural environment
Compare it with the growth of planned town
Land Acquisition Act
Enacted during British Rule
1. The title
2. Forced acquisitions
3. No safeguards
4. Silent on resettlement and rehabilitation of those displaced
5. Urgency clause
6. Low rates of compensation
different state-led alternative mechanisms to acquire, plan and service land
• Area Development Approach
• Town Planning Scheme (TPS)
• Land Pooling Scheme
• Joint Development Model (JDM) Process
• TDR
• Cluster Redevelopment Scheme

Prepare Any One

• Concept
• Origin
• Provisions
• Process
• Implementation- Example
• Benefits
• Limitations
Land Acquisition Act
New Town –Chandigarh / Rourkela
• Evolution
• Planning Concept
• Approach
• Other policy Impact
• Implementation
• Impact

Delhi Master Plan- Salient feature 1962, basic unit, structure, ring town, historical districts
Ring Town
Satellite Town- NOIDA / Navi Mumbai, - Evolution, planning process, Development Constraints, implementation
Regional Plan –NCR- What is - Region, Regional Plan, Aspects of Regional Planning, types of region, spatial structure-hierarchy
of settlements
NCR- Planning – Evolution, planning principles, spatial spread- Hierarchy of settlements, Policy zones
Economic Sector Policy
Transport
Land Use – Urban –Rural
NCR planning Board- what is it and its Functions
Review of NCR Plan 2001
Area Delineation
Land Acquisition Act
Cultural Disorientation / Transformation
• Comparing characteristics of the old city and new cities
• How and why transformations are taking place

1985-2005- Economic and Political Status

Why did the Government of India begin freeing up the national economy?
Issues
Major Elements of 1980s Economic reforms
The consequent shift in the state’s approach from ‘development controller’ to ‘development regulator.’
• First, amendment the colonial land acquisition act enacted in 1894, as well as began to scrutinize the Urban Land Ceiling and
Regulation Act (ULCRA) enacted in 1976.
• Second, enactment of the 74th Amendment to the Constitution of India in early 1990s.
• Third, cities began emerging on the government agenda (NCU and infrastructure reports).

Focus on large scale infrastructure and establishment of various Authorities

Capacity building and empowering ULB
Central Mission- JNNURM
Land Acquisition Act
Transformation in city planning and development
• Legitimacy of statutory master plans
• Public sector planning’s focus began shifting solely from the making and implementation of master plans toward sector- and
project-oriented urban plans.
• State planners continued to make comprehensive plans, like those for new settlements such as Greater Noida and capitals for
newly created states like Naya Raipur for the state of Chhattisgarh,
• Government agencies began placing greater emphasis on private sector–led projects involving urban infrastructure, housing,
and real estate development.
• Several cities, for example, like Bangalore and Hyderabad sponsored major infrastructure projects facilitating private sector
investments, such as the HITEC (Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy) city catering the IT and
information technology enabled services (ITES) sectors, both cities also build brand-new international airports with the help of
private sector.
• Private investment in city planning and urban development grew with the inception of new cities like Lavasa and Magarpatta
located in the state of Maharashtra.
• Public private partnership between Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority and the Jaypee Group yielded
important road infrastructure projects like 156-kilometer-long expressway connecting the cities of Delhi and Agra.
• Another major partnership between the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited and the Hindustan
Construction Company resulted in the 5,600-meter-long optical cable held Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link Bridge connecting Bandra in
the western suburbs of Mumbai with Worli in southern Mumbai.
Land Acquisition Act
Transformation in city planning and development
The emergent road network not only facilitated the development of new townships and industrial estates in the hinterland but also
supported the rapid development of real estate and infrastructure projects on the urban edges across the country, including
full-fledged cities like HITEC in Hyderabad, Magarpatta in Maharashtra, and Rajarhat in Kolkata.

Private sector– led planned developments increased manifold in key fields such as higher and technical education, specialized
health care, upper-class housing, shopping, and entertainment, receiving much public visibility and scholarly attention.

In addition to the private sector, the state and civic agencies have also speeded up building new projects like public universities,
colleges, schools, and housing developments across urban India.

Owing to increasing workload authorities began inviting private firms for making master development plans in several states like
Punjab and Rajasthan even as other states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, and West Bengal encouraged the private sector to
undertake the entire work of planning and building new cities and city-extensions.

Plans prepared were more market oriented less focused on low income housing, tax collection, efficient service delivery and cost
recovery.
Mumbai- Modak Meyer Plan
1964-81 Plan
1981-2001 plan
Density Regulation- Impact
Privatisation of Planning

Conservation
Meaning
Importance
What led conservation
Typology of Conservation
Intervention of various kinds
Framework for protection of heritage sites
Protection Laws
Grading
How it is institutionalized- Heritage cell, master plan, part legislation- Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mumbai, Hydrabad
Model Bye laws
Master Plans in India