The Rationale for Reviewing Current Concepts of Urban Planning and Developing New Ones in India

• Main Author: A. G. Krishna Menon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-09-01
• Series: Built Heritage
• Subjects: historic space; historic metropolitan context; evolution; reflection
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/BF03545673

Abstract Urban planning in India is heir to a colonial paradigm that imposed practices developed from the experiences of Western urbanisation to the local Indian context. This paper suggests that this paradigm exacerbates the complex problems of contemporary urbanisation, but there is little attempt among Indian urban planners to acknowledge and address the consequences of their colonial legacy. The forces of globalisation are reinforcing this postcolonial intellectual malaise by reposing greater faith in capital- and technology-intensive solutions to solve problems instead of reforming the inherited processes of urban management. This paper argues that the nascent field of urban conservation in India offers the potential to review the dominant paradigms of urban planning and develop more context-specific and appropriate strategies for tackling the problems of Indian urbanisation.