Project description

From the next 100 metro cities in the world about 40 are going to be in India, India is a growing economy with rapid urbanization which is expected to have a total housing shortage from about 18.8 million in 2012 to about 30 million in 2022. About one thirds of the Indian population lives in slums and on an average 48 percent of metro cities lives in informality with poor habitat conditions, living on untenable land with no access to safe water and sanitation, insecurity of tenure and constant threat from eviction. This carries the danger of growing poverty and - subsequently - of social and political unrest. The Indian government is addressing these problems by defining various programmes for Hosing “Housing for All” by 2022, sanitation as open defecation campaign and many small programs under the smart city mission in alignment with the SDG’s.   

The proposed many programmes and schemes creates huge demand and more importantly responsible architects and urban planning professionals who are trained to deal with ground realities and are sensitised to deal with complex challenges towards development of Inclusive communities.

Many authorities and local stakeholder lack well trained planning experts capable of sensibly responding to the needs of informal squatters. Sustainable approaches to support different types of urban poor require well trained academic personnel with a sound understanding of social and spatial mechanisms at work in informal settlements. The integration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects into architectural training holds high potential for relevant services to the society.

However, Indian HEIs are not well equipped to meet these demands, since curricula in architecture and urban planning predominantly focus on technical and design skills. Therefore, Indian Partner institutions have identified the following needs for innovation

• Indian HEIs need to strengthen their relations to the wider economic and social environment (public authorities, companies, community organisations and NGOs) to exchange experiences, build awareness, meet societal needs and accomplish their social responsibility

• Indian HEIs need to incorporate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects in their curricula for architecture and planning, which is either partly or completely new for them.

• HEIs lack indigenous educational resources, which reflect the specific Indian context for sustainable housing and inclusive community development.

• For developing indigenous educational resources, which contain new tools, methodologies and pedagogical approaches, they require specific know how, which will be rendered by European partners.

BReUCom hence helps bridge this gap between planning and architecture training to working environments to understand and react sensitively to community needs and partnerships.