State wise types of Special Economic Zone (SEZ)

Critically polluted industrial clusters in India

State -wise Polluted Clusters No. and Location

Source: pib.nic.in

State-wise prevalent Public Private Partnership (PPP) format

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Infrastructure priority Matrix of India

By - Anoop Kumar Jha

State-wise infrastructure priorities in India-

Future Cities: Which City form would prove to be most sustainable?

Acknowledging the need of Flexible Norms and Innovation Support for short-to-medium term housing needs of Urban Poor and Underprivileged segment

By Anoop Jha

Cities and towns of India are living in a perpetual dilemma of “need to provide decent housing to urban poor as per standard norms” Vs “apparent inability to provide even a minimum standard living in growing squatter settlements or slums”. This phenomenon seems inevitable and city authorities seem to be helpless in dealing with this issue, blaming to financial resource constraints, unless they understand the need to review the standard housing norm and make it more flexible to find out whether there is any intermediate solution to fill the gap of this vast disparity even between poor (Lower / lowest Income Group) and poor (Slum dweller, beggars etc.). 

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There is an urgent need to discuss definition of what we call “Standard” in terms of housing or dwelling needs, and the significance and validity of this “standard norms” if we have always failed to provide even a minimum need of safe and respectable shelter to a major segment of urban poor living in slum. We are caught in the illusion of utopia that we will fulfill the housing needs of all as per standards fixed by governments and planners, and fail to see and admit that the fact that under such acute resource constraint, and ever-growing influx of population from rural to urban areas, poor people are finding their own ways to fulfill their housing needs, constructing houses out of junk materials- tin, plastic sheets, cardboards, thermocol, any object or material they find rejected by the city, living in an unsafe and unhygienic conditions. Do planners feel responsible to them, at all? There are buzz words “Slum Networking” “integrated slum” etc., but those are for streamlining existing slums and squatter settlements, what about the slum being built today, what about tomorrow?

City administration will have to increasingly play a role of facilitator and inventor rather than just provider to fulfill short to medium term housing needs, they have the resources and skill sets, thsy have the talented architect and planners and financial brains, to provide a better shelter; they can help and facilitate those poorest of poor people to build their own home with those same materials which is considered junk, providing much decent homes which are structurally sound, planned with proper infrastructure. Some R&D is urgently needed on the similar line of thought.

Following is the abstract from pib.nic.in - (along with comments)

"There are various reasons for creation of slums of which the most important are as follows

(i)    Increased urbanization leading to pressure on the available land and infrastructure, especially for the poor.

(ii) Natural increase in the population of urban poor and migration from rural areas and small towns to larger 

     cities. 

(iii) Inappropriate system of urban planning which does not provide adequate space for the urban poor in the       City Master Plans. (This is what planners and policy makers need to acknowledge. City Master planning has to be an inclusive process, and adequate provisions have to be made for urban poor for a sustainable city plan)

(iv) Sky-rocketing land prices due to increasing demand for land and constraints on supply of land.

(v) Absence of programmes of affordable housing for the urban poor in most States. (The definition of affordable housing itself has to be changed..innovative construction techniques, new materials, check on wastage of material during construction, mass production, low cost housing techniques are some of the key ingredients which might change the definition and cost of affordable housing)

(vi)  Lack of availability of credit for low income housing. (Finance has to be generated partially from Government & Aid and rest from the financial resources mobilised from the community itself, no matter how poor is the individual or a family, collectively a poor community can mobilise a considerable amount of resources in terms of finance and labor)

(vii)  Increasing cost of construction."  (This is where innovation comes into picture, housing with innovative use and reuse of materials, pool of bright talented architects and planners should come forward with innovative ideas for the same, in the guidance of Govt.)

Anoop Jha is an Architect Planner with specialization in Urban and Regional Planning

An unexplored solution for sustainable Urban Planning- Study of traditional rural settlement patterns

By- Anoop Jha

Traditionally rural settlements have a very distinct informal character which is always fresh and delightful which is somehow missing in our contemporary cities no matter how well it is plan. That human aspect and scale that we find in rural settlements is increasingly being lost in the rigidity and functionality of new urban planning.

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Villages and rural communities are there since time immemorial. They have evolved and learned there planning lessons from their own experience. Every Village appears to be uniquely adapted to region, its local micro ecology and culture, it has evolves in a course of time accommodating changing requirements and absorbing the growth.

Study of rural morphology can be a source of inspiration for the Urban Planners. It can throw a light on sustainability principals which can be further replicated in urban setting with required modifications. There is a serious need to understand the logic behind the specific spatial form and variety of existing rural settlements and what makes it more human, and whether we can learn something from these and use it in next generation of urban Planning.

Some of the satellite images taken from different parts of India showing rural morphology-

Daily space curve of a common Urban Man

post by : Anoop Jha

An average working person in a metropolitan city goes through a funnel of fluctuating space experience following a somewhat definite pattern on an average working day – from home to public transport to office to public transport again and back to home. Let’s call it “Daily Space Curve”. It’s a space footprint available to a person on an average working day, distributed across a day and across the standard route followed to complete the day activities.

Individual Space Curve

Daily Space Curve can prove to be one of the comparative scales while studying and comparing the standard of living or livability of different cities. Larger the space footprint available to a citizen more livable and desirable would be the city.

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Pressed Necessity - Invasion of natural desire for a respectable “Social Space”

Urban public transport provides a faster way to commute, but it comes at a cost of something which cannot be compensated with saved time or money i.e. “Social Space”, but most people often seem to ignore the fact or somehow they have accepted to pay this cost. Every human being either individual or collective, have a natural desire to create and maintain their sphere of private space in a social setting which is like a virtual bubble around them, primarily for their inherent security instinct, let’s call this bubble “Social Space”. Social space tends to grow in size as the size of group increases, from individual to crowd.

Social Space Bubble

While in public places an individual subconsciously try to defend their social space trying to maintain a respectable distance from people surrounding them. But in crowded public places mostly in intra-city commuting through overcrowded MRTS, BRTS, Buses, Local Trains etc. people invade into each other’s social space bubble due to increasingly limited space that different modes of transport offers due to ever growing population, irrespective of their like or dislike. 


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Bigger the city more acute is this phenomenon. More the people are packed closely more uneasiness they feel. There seem to be no other choice for the common citizens.

Pressed Necessity of Public Transport

Social Space : Desired Vs Available

It appears that most of the public transport in any city caters to the population much higher than their design capacity, at least higher than the footfall or ridership taken into consideration while designing the system, because if we assume the ridership figure of any functional public transport vehicle at present as a designed capacity of that vehicle and divide it with the usable space available inside the vehicle, the figure of ^“Area available for an individual inside a public vehicle (Metro coach / bus)”  hence achieved  would be far less than what it has been designed or planned for, or what we call “standard area requirement per person per vehicle / coach. It’s a pressed Necessity of the time, but there is an urgent need to find a better solution to respect the personal space of people in an urban setting.

See related articles by - Anoop Jha


http://planningurbanoregional.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-space-curve-of-common-urban-man.html.