This book is a comprehensive history of city planning in post-independence India. It explores how the nature and orientation of city planning have evolved in India’s changing sociopolitical context over the past hundred or so years. The book situates India’s experience within a historical framework in order to illustrate continuities and disjunctions between the pre- and post-independent Indian laws, policies, and programs for city planning and development. It focuses on the development, scope, and significance of professional planning work in the midst of rapid economic transition, migration, social disparity, and environmental degradation. The volume also highlights the need for inclusive planning processes that can provide clean air, water, and community spaces to large, diverse, and fast growing communities. Detailed and insightful, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of public administration, civil engineering, architecture, 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 is a comprehensive history of city planning in post-independence India. It explores how the nature and orientation of city planning have evolved in India's changing sociopolitical context over the past hundred or so years. The book situates India's experience within a historical framework in order to illustrate continuities and disjunctions between the pre- and post-independent Indian laws, policies, and programs for city planning and development. It focuses on the development, scope, and significance of professional planning work in the midst of rapid economic transition, migration, social disparity, and environmental degradation. The volume also highlights the need for inclusive planning processes that can provide clean air, water, and community spaces to large, diverse, and fast growing communities. Detailed and insightful, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of public administration, civil engineering, architecture, geography, economics, and sociology. It will also be useful for policy makers and professionals working in the areas of town and country planning.

Planners tend to promote formal plans as the only game in town while diverse efforts of urban actors shape our cities. Tracking the development of American "neighborhood unit" concept in independent India's planning practice and literature-from the national level policies to on-the-ground applications in the city of Jaipur-Vidyarthi explains how a host of actors including neighborhood residents, squatters, politicians and developers made different kinds of plans that assimilated the design concept in line with their practical concerns and cultural preferences creating unique variants of neighborhood urbanism over time. One Idea, Many Plans counters misguided characterization of these unforeseen efforts as 'unauthorized' by state authorities. It shows how the frequently informal and tacit plans were neither arbitrary actions nor aimless subversions but purposeful future-oriented efforts that shaped the envisaged sociality and spatiality of Indian cities in more meaningful ways than the official master plans promoting planned neighborhoods. Carefully illustrating the different kinds of plans local actors use to guide incremental adaptation, improvement and investment, Vidyarthi offers insights about how we might improve formal plan making. Scholars, students and professional practitioners interested in different regions of the global south would find these lessons useful as a new generation of city design ideas like sustainability and new urbanism gain traction in an increasingly globalized World.

Planners tend to promote formal plans as the only game in town while diverse efforts of urban actors shape our cities. Tracking the development of American "neighborhood unit" concept in independent India's planning practice and literature-from the national level policies to on-the-ground applications in the city of Jaipur-Vidyarthi explains how a host of actors including neighborhood residents, squatters, politicians and developers made different kinds of plans that assimilated the design concept in line with their practical concerns and cultural preferences creating unique variants of neighborhood urbanism over time. One Idea, Many Plans counters misguided characterization of these unforeseen efforts as 'unauthorized' by state authorities. It shows how the frequently informal and tacit plans were neither arbitrary actions nor aimless subversions but purposeful future-oriented efforts that shaped the envisaged sociality and spatiality of Indian cities in more meaningful ways than the official master plans promoting planned neighborhoods. Carefully illustrating the different kinds of plans local actors use to guide incremental adaptation, improvement and investment, Vidyarthi offers insights about how we might improve formal plan making. Scholars, students and professional practitioners interested in different regions of the global south would find these lessons useful as a new generation of city design ideas like sustainability and new urbanism gain traction in an increasingly globalized World.

A city's infrastructure influences the daily life of residents, neighborhoods, and businesses. But uniting the hard infrastructure of roads and bridges with the soft infrastructure of parks and public art creates significant political challenges. Planners at all stages must work at an intersection of public policy, markets, and aesthetics--while also accounting for how a project will work in both the present and the future. The latest volume in the Urban Agenda series looks at pressing infrastructure issues discussed at the 2017 UIC Urban Forum. Topics include: competing notions of the infrastructure ideal; what previous large infrastructure programs can teach the Trump Administration; how infrastructure influences city design; the architecture of the cities of tomorrow; who benefits from infrastructure improvements; and evaluations of projects like the Chicago Riverwalk and grassroots efforts to reclaim neighborhood parks from gangs. Contributors: Philip Ashton, Beverly S. Bunch, Bill Burton, Charles Hoch, Sean Lally, and Sanjeev Vidyarthi

A city's infrastructure influences the daily life of residents, neighborhoods, and businesses. But uniting the hard infrastructure of roads and bridges with the soft infrastructure of parks and public art creates significant political challenges. Planners at all stages must work at an intersection of public policy, markets, and aesthetics--while also accounting for how a project will work in both the present and the future. The latest volume in the Urban Agenda series looks at pressing infrastructure issues discussed at the 2017 UIC Urban Forum. Topics include: competing notions of the infrastructure ideal; what previous large infrastructure programs can teach the Trump Administration; how infrastructure influences city design; the architecture of the cities of tomorrow; who benefits from infrastructure improvements; and evaluations of projects like the Chicago Riverwalk and grassroots efforts to reclaim neighborhood parks from gangs. Contributors: Philip Ashton, Beverly S. Bunch, Bill Burton, Charles Hoch, Sean Lally, and Sanjeev Vidyarthi