The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India's Urban Spaces
The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India's Urban Spaces

Author: Feroze Varun Gandhi

Publisher: Rupa Publ iCat Ions India

Published: 2023-02-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789355208156

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A monumental work that shows how economic vitality can go hand-in-hand with creating vibrant cities offering a haven for cultural and intellectual expression. For most urban Indians, the past few years have been unsettling-we have seen neighbourhoods locked down for months during a pandemic, increasing the daily challenges of earning a living as well as of access to good healthcare and education. Inflation has ravaged the land with spiralling prices of food, rent and transport. Our cities are hard to live in; lacking basic amenities, while being unaesthetic and discordant with our civilization. As economic growth takes priority, questions about liveability and meaningful employment arise, along with concerns about the deteriorating law and order. In blindly and poorly aping Western models, our cities homogenize, losing their character, their identity and their soul. Meanwhile, climate change is no longer a mythical or distant possibility but a distinct and immediate reality. A typical city must now cope with extreme temperatures, both flooding and water shortages and abysmal air quality. These can no longer be treated as threats but as certainties to be planned for. The Indian Metropolis seeks to begin a national conversation on these issues and suggests ways to turn our cities into enabling, energizing environments geared towards enhancing the daily life of the average city dweller.

Indian Metropolis
Indian Metropolis

Author: Vasant K. Bawa

Publisher:

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13:

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By the turn of the century we are told by the experts, there will be several cities in developing countries whose population will exceed ten million. The largest cities in the world in future are likely to be Mexico City, Bombay and Calcutta, not London, Paris, New York or Tokyo. Several cities in developing countries have a population exceeding two million already and are expected to reach five million in a few years time. In India, the breakdown of city services like transporatation and water supply has become a cause of widespread concern. Rights of pavement dwellers have been taken up to the Supreme Court of India. Their eviction has been halted, after a fast by the actress Shabana Azmi in mid-1986. Why is there a breakdown of city services? Can the pressure on cities be reduced by diverting development to other parts of the country? Such questions can best be answered by someone with direct experience of city management.

The Making of a Metropolis
The Making of a Metropolis

Author: Ashok Kumar Jain

Publisher:

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13:

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Delhi, the National Capital of India, is a nerve center for town planning ideas and activities. The successes and failures of its urban development implications. However, before assessing the end results, it is necessary to understand the complexity of urban development, which is an amalgam of political, historical, social and economic forces. Delhi provides an excellent case study in this respect. Delhi stands at a point in history where it can either take the road to a mean and squalid future, or, it, imaginatively handled to the status of a great metropolis. Highlighting the sense of impending crisis, it provides a tour de force of historical Delhis. Starting with the national scenarios and urban policy, the book, traces the historical and political evolution of Delhi, recreating the nostalgia when it used to be the most graceful and glorious city of the Orient. The issues of concern stretch over a wide spectrum: from policy planning to case studies. The papers cover the aspects of vital importance: upgradation of the core city, environmental and ecological conservation, informal settlements and housing. The subject of housing policy and shelter have been analysed with a fresh approach. Apart from assessing the current crisis, the routes it could and should take have been identified. The essays are not just academic and problem oriented but provide glimpses of the alternatives, showing what could be done to tackle the real life problems. The analysis and ideas converge in the Papankala Project, a sub-city being planned in Delhi. The town planning practice in India has been critically reviewed in conclusion. The publication offers a panorama of town planning and urban development practice, which should be of interest to any body working in these fields in the Third World.

Urban Mobility
Urban Mobility

Author: Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2024-07-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Comprehensive and insightful about making of some of pioneering transport infrastructure projects in India by people who were involved in their design and making.... Exhaustive coverage with case studies of road- bridges and metro projects in the three metropolitan cities of Delhi, Kolkatta and Mumbai.... Provides insights into design & engineering of mobility infrastructure which drives contemporary urbanisation in India.... Urban growth in India has been poised towards an upward curve and continues to remain so over the coming years reflecting the global trend. Today, more than half the world's population lives in urban areas while urban population in India has increased from 82 out of 431 million in 1961 to 410 out of 1285 million in 2015. The present 60% GDP in India from urban areas also reflects the economic significance of urbanisation and the corresponding Infrastructure development. In the absence of an informed approach, development tends to be wasteful of resources and often leads to chaos rather than provide a solution. An integrated development approach to urbanagglomeration has become necessary in this context. Correspondingly, infrastructure planning and implementation within the urban agglomerates as well as the ones forming the networks between urban and rural centres needs to be informed by the experiences within the Indian context.

The Making of an Indian Metropolis
The Making of an Indian Metropolis

Author: Prashant Kidambi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 135188624X

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This book explores the social history of colonial Bombay in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, a pivotal time in its emergence as a modern metropolis. Drawing together strands that hitherto have been treated in a piecemeal fashion and based on a variety of archival sources, the book offers a systematic analytical account of historical change in a premier colonial city. In particular, it considers the ways in which the turbulent changes unleashed by European modernity were negotiated, appropriated or resisted by the colonised in one of the major cities of the Indian Ocean region. A series of crises in the 1890s triggered far-reaching changes in the relationship between state and society in Bombay. The city’s colonial rulers responded to the upheavals of this decade by adopting a more interventionist approach to urban governance. The book shows how these new strategies and mechanisms of rule ensnared colonial authorities in contradictions that they were unable to resolve easily and rendered their relationship with local society increasingly fractious. The study also explores important developments within an emergent Indian civil society. It charts the density and diversity of the city’s expanding associational culture and shows how educated Indians embraced a new ethic of ’social service’ that sought to ’improve’ and ’uplift’ the urban poor. In conclusion, the book reflects on the historical legacy of these developments for urban society and politics in postcolonial Bombay. This wide-ranging work will be essential reading for specialists in British imperial history, postcolonial studies and urban social history. It will also be of interest to all those concerned with the comparative history of governance and public culture in the modern city.