Informal Settlements in Indian Cities - Impulses for Innovation in Architecture and Urban Planning Education

Expected rapid urbanization, entailing massive rural to urban migration of less endowed rural population to urban areas when there is already a massive housing stress (of 18.8 million housing shortage in 2012), is expected to create informal settlements with appalling living conditions. These settlements will hold multicultural population given India’s social diversity. India requires a cadre of differently trained architects and urban planners who can address the situation of poverty, informality and diversity of populations in their projects and plans. Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 11 on safe, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient cities and Goal 16 on peaceful, just, and inclusive societies) will require urban planners, designers and architects rise to the occasion.

During the conference on ‘Informal Settlements in Indian Cities - Impulses for Innovation in Architecture and Urban Planning Education’, we bring together higher education institutions in India imparting study programs related to architecture and urban planning with representatives from different stakeholder groups (e.g. national authorities, corporations, NGO’s). We would like to know, how different providers of education and training of new generations of professionals in architecture and urban planning deal with the issues of informal settlements in Indian cities in their curricula and courses, and what representatives from different stakeholder groups think about these innovations in curricula and courses.

The conference is concerned with creating a joint understanding of informality, with discussing different case studies on informal settlements & social inclusion, but also with participatory processes and with the pedagogy for imparting the issue of informality in the education and training of architects and urban planners. The conference sessions are complemented with a documentary film program on the evenings of each day.

The conference is hosted by the Faculty of Architecture at Karpagam Academy of Higher Education (KAHE), Coimbatore.