planning pandemic resilient cities for india

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis(An Autonomous Institute of Government of Madhya Pradesh)

January 2021

WEBINAR REPORT

Organized by

Centre for Urban Governance

PLANNING PANDEMIC RESILIENT CITIES FOR INDIA: THE ROAD AHEAD

WEBINAR REPORT

PLANNING PANDEMIC RESILIENT CITIES FOR INDIA:

THE ROAD AHEAD

Organized By

CENTRE FOR URBAN GOVERNANCE

JANUARY 2021

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis

(An Autonomous Institute of Government of Madhya Pradesh)

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Contents

Acknowledgement ......................................................................................................................... iii

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1

2. Panellist - Prof. R. Shankar ............................................................................................................. 3

2.1. Introduction to the Panellist .................................................................................................... 3

2.2. Presentation ............................................................................................................................. 3

3. Panellist - Prof. Dr. N. Sridharan .................................................................................................. 16

3.1. Introduction of the Panellist .................................................................................................. 16

3.2. Presentation ........................................................................................................................... 16

4. Panellist - Dr. Uttam Kumar Roy .................................................................................................. 20


4.2. Presentation ........................................................................................................................... 20

5. Panellist - Prof. Utpal Sharma ....................................................................................................... 27


5.2. Presentation ........................................................................................................................... 27

6. Panellist - Dr. A. Nuno Martins .................................................................................................... 31


6.2. Presentation ........................................................................................................................... 31

7. Interactive Discussion Session ...................................................................................................... 35

8. Interactive (Q/A) Session .............................................................................................................. 39

Annexures ..................................................................................................................................... 43

A. Webinar Poster ...................................................................................................................... 43

B. Minute to Minute Programme ............................................................................................... 44

C. List of Participants ................................................................................................................ 45

D. Participants comments .......................................................................................................... 50

Some Glimpses ............................................................................................................................. 52

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Prof. R. Shankar presenting during the webinar ..................................................................... 3

Figure 2: Dr. N. Sridharan presenting in the webinar .......................................................................... 16

Figure 3: Dr. Uttam K. Roy presenting during webinar ...................................................................... 20

Figure 4: Prof. Utpal Sharma presenting during the webinar .............................................................. 27

Figure 5: Dr. A. Nuno Martins, presenting during the webinar ........................................................... 31

Figure 6: Shri Girish Sharma, setting up the tone for the webinar ...................................................... 52

Figure 7: Dr. Uttam K. Roy & Dr. N. Sridharan, during interactive session ....................................... 52

Figure 8: Interactive discussion session among panellists ................................................................... 52

Figure 9: Interactive Q/A session with participants-1 .......................................................................... 53

Figure 10: Interactive Q/A session with participants-2 ........................................................................ 53

Figure 11: Group Photo at the end of webinar .................................................................................... 54

file:///F:/AIGGPA/Project%201-%20Making%20Cities%20Resilient%20Through%20Master%20Planning/Symposium%20poster/Report/Webinar%20Report%20on%20Planning%20Pandemic%20Resilient%20Cities%20for%20India-%20The%20Road%20Ahead.docx%23_Toc62812641

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Acknowledgement

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis (AIGGPA), Bhopal

came into existence in May 2014 as an autonomous institute of Government of Madhya

Pradesh. Its governing council is presided over by the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and

Director General is the administrative and operational head of the institute.

Centre for Urban Governance (CUG) was established on 21st February 2019 through a

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between AIGGPA and the Department of Urban

Development and Housing, Government of Madhya Pradesh.

The webinar “Planning Pandemic Resilient Cities for India: The Road Ahead” was organised

by Centre of Urban Governance under the study titled “Making Cities of Madhya Pradesh

Resilient through Master Planning”. The webinar aimed to receive feedbacks, ideas, opinion

and insights on the study taken up by CUG from the eminent panellists, and other attendees.

The Centre express their deep gratitude to all the expert panellists and acknowledges, IIT

Roorkee, SPA Bhopal, Nirma University Ahmadabad, University of Lisbon, (CIAUD), Lisbon,

Portugal, IIT Kharagpur, SPA Delhi, NIUA, HUDCO, GIZ, UADD and various other eminent

academicians, experts from all over the country and abroad.

The participants included academicians, researchers, administrative officers, private sectors,

field practitioners, and students from premier institutes of architecture, planning and related

fields. Centre appreciates and is thankful to all the esteemed participants to take time out from

their busy schedules and participate in the webinar.

Centre acknowledges the efforts put by the study team for the assigned tasks to the best of their

possibilities and capabilities. Centre is grateful to all the speakers who presented their finest

ideas before the participants in the webinar.

Last but not the least, the webinar would not be possible without the sincere efforts and hard

work put along by the project team. Webinar was planned and executed under the guidance of

Shri Girish Sharma, Director-cum-Principal Advisor, CUG, AIGGPA and it was ably

supported by project consultant Prof. R. Shankar, IIT Roorkee, the Centre’s Advisors Mr.

Anshul Puriya & Ms. Masumi Hajela. Centre is grateful to the valuable contribution made by

the project Research Associates Mr. Vishnu P Vinay and Ms. Priyanka Bansal in organizing

the webinar and drafting the webinar report.

WEBINAR REPORT PLANNING PANDEMIC RESILIENT CITIES FOR INDIA: THE ROAD AHEAD

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1. Introduction

The study titled “Making Cities of Madhya Pradesh Resilient through Master Planning”

forms the basis of this webinar. As the Covid-19 pandemic is evolving into an urban planning

challenge, we need to redefine our role as planners, but more importantly, we need to re-

examine the urban planning agenda in the post-pandemic world. The webinar focused on the

various urban issues emerging due to COVID-19 pandemic and discussed the diverse ways to

make our cities resilient to a similar future crisis.

Covid-19 is largely an urban phenomenon, with the cities world over having become epicentres

of the pandemic. The UN Habitat Covid-19 Response Plan also says the same:

• Initially it spread between major cities of the world.

• 99% of the total cases were experienced in more than 1400 cities spanning over 210

countries.

• India is in the same league with majority of the cases coming from only 30 cities.

• In Madhya Pradesh, four major cities have witnessed the highest number of Covid

-19 cases.

Total 155 participants attended the webinar. The webinar begun with welcoming all the

participants and panellists and the Panel chair by webinar coordinator Shri Anshul Puriya,

Advisor AIGGPA Bhopal. He introduced all the eminent expert speakers from prestigious

organizations around the world, in the panel to discuss the diverse ways to make our cities

resilient to future crises.

The panel was chaired and moderated by Shri Girish Sharma, IAS, Director-cum-Principal

Advisor, CUG, AIGGPA. The following panellists expressed their expert views in the sessions.

I. Prof. R. Shankar,

Former Prof. and Head, Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee.

II. Dr. N. Sridharan,

Director, School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal (M.P.)

III. Dr. Uttam Kumar Roy,

Associate Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee,

IV. Prof. Utpal Sharma,

Director, Institute of Architecture & Planning, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

and

V. Dr. Afonso Nuno Martins,

Researcher, University of Lisbon, Faculty of Architecture, Centre of Research in

Architecture, Urbanism and Design (CIAUD), Lisbon, Portugal

Later Anshul Puriya welcomed the Panel chair and moderator Shri Girish Sharma, IAS,

Director-cum Principal Advisor, AIGGPA, for setting up the tone for the webinar and introduce

the study taken up by the Centre of Urban Governance.

Shri Girish Sharma asserted that COVID-19 has resulted in dramatic global changes in a

relatively short period and has posed a challenge for the new generation city planners, to find

a way out. He said that this pandemic is a whistle blower towards inefficient planning and

management of cities. On the flip side it poses an opportunity to rethink and rebuild our cities

for future to make them safe, inclusive & resilient for future crises. Their level of development

and the socio-economic determinants of their populations play a big role.

Cities with a high concentration of urban poor and deep routed inequalities are potentially more

vulnerable than those that are better resourced, less crowded, and more inclusive. Unplanned

& unregulated growth of cities has triggered inefficiencies in basic provision of services in


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cities, demanding attention from policymakers. It’s high time, we need to redefine our role as

planners.

More importantly, we need to re-examine the urban planning agenda in the post-pandemic

world. Urban policy makers and planners need to rethink urban planning trends and bring forth

existing and emergent deficiencies. The study taken up by the Centre will help us understand

these challenges posed by the current pandemic.

The webinar was further coordinated by Ms. Mausmi Hajela, Advisor AIGGPA and she

introduced all the panellist before their presentation during the webinar and also coordinated

the interactive discussion session followed by the question and answer session at the end of

webinar.

The discourse by the expert panellists are given in this report along with their power point

slides that was presented during the webinar.


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2. Panellist - Prof. R. Shankar

2.1. Introduction to the Panellist

Prof. R Shankar is former Professor & Head, Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT

Roorkee and now extending professional consultancy for various organisations including CUG

for the project Making cities Resilient through Master Planning. He is also visiting expert/

professor/examiner, academic advisor and consultant to many architectural institutions. His

professional consultancy work includes the planning and design of PTCUL Headquarters

complex at Dehradun, campus landscaping and preparation of master plans for Greater Noida

extension and Gangotri, and Haridwar Ghat Development. He had been involved in the

curriculum and faculty development of many architectural institutions. His areas of interest

span from energy/ ecological aspects, sustainable architecture & sustainable urban & rural

development. Post retirement from IIT Roorkee, Prof. R. Shankar continues his pursuits of

teaching, guiding, mentoring and consultancy work.

2.2. Presentation

Planning Pandemic Resilient Cities: Some observations and Thoughts.

The study was presented by professor R. Shankar, IIT Roorkee in the webinar. He explained

the various issues related to the study topic and interim findings to the attendees. The

presentation along with discourse is attached herewith for reference.

Figure 1: Prof. R. Shankar presenting during the webinar

My talk is titled planning pandemic resilience cities some observations and thoughts. Earlier

when the lockdown began, in late march during the first lockdown I had made some

calculations and some estimates and then I said the rate if incidence of cases and mortality I

projected that in India we may experience sometime by the end of year the cases may exceed

10 million if that rate continued and mortality could very well be exceeding around 5 lakh cases

and it could even touch 1 million depending on how mortality rate fluctuates later.

Even in that case we need not worry much that is what at that time I predicted but fortunately

India had a series of lockdown and every lockdown we learnt and we improved and then the


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situation improved actually, it became better. Till September it was rising, the incidence of

disease was rising and also mortality rate and at one point of time the daily number of cases

par day it recorded close to a lakh (hundred thousand) cases were recorded, that was in

September. Then there was a dip, it came down and this week it was well below 20,000. So,

from 100,000 to 20,000 it has been steadily coming down i.e. the incidence of cases per day

and mortality rate has also been coming down, it’s there India has managed very well there.

Lot of predictions were given by experts at that time the pandemic will, the situation will

become worse with the temperature going down i.e. during winter it will become worse and in

summer it could improve but what happened actually was in summer the incidence was

increasing and mortality was also increasing and in winter now it is coming down. It is just the

opposite.

And right in the beginning what you see in the visuals are very interesting during the first and

second lockdown there was enormous, unpredicted nobody had any clue as to the migration

the took place during the first and second or immediately after the first lockdown, between the

first and second and second and third lockdowns lot of enormous migration of urban work force

they migrated back to their rural homes.

It is estimated something like 6 crore (60 million) people must have migrated during that period

and it was not planned and there were no arrangements and people were asked to stay back in

their urban homes but they couldn’t, how would they? This was after it occurred, it was like a

tsunami of people going back to their villages, rural homes, after it happened the lessons, we

learnt the things became a kind of study. Through various management measures enforcement

measures, things were contained, we have been studying the situation, collecting the data on

incidence of cases and mortality.


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The threats have not become true whereas the benefits we have enjoyed and the opportunities

are there for us to make use of and the loss have not been as huge as I have predicted it has

been reduced to remarkable level, in fact India has done very well. So now I was saying

pandemic is nothing but, looking at ecological point of view is nothing but a natural

phenomenon which occurs once in few decades or few years depending on what it is. It’s a

levelling gesture it’s an invisible hand of nature, it’s a balancing act of nature and it’s also an

opportunity for humanity to look at what they have been doing and then to correct, reform,

transform and also change their course. So nature in this period also reveals how it actually is,

so in India we experience, it became the environment because of stopping of travel and stopping

of all activities and it came to a standstill in fact it did wonderful things to environment and the

environment became clearer there was pure air and people could first time see the Himalayan

peek from cities like Jalandhar. All this kind of thing, the nature is telling us this is how.


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The second part which I was saying is resilient, resilient is actually being prepared to cope up

with any American situation, any calamity like that, rural areas are more resilient and urban

areas are not. Rural areas resilient only due to various characteristics so they are more cohesive

and they are more self-sustaining and self-dependent and their needs are very less and they live

a simple life and they are already at low level of existence, no calamity can affect them anyway

and their requirements are very simple, urban communities and urban areas are not like that

they are less resilient to calamities that is what I was saying, in addition to that to cope up with

Covid like pandemic we need immunity, people need immunity so the immunity depends on

according to me four factors genetics, lifestyle, age and fitness status and environmental

factors, so environmental factors as urban areas are concerned environment is already polluted

and urban lifestyle is not conducive to immunity building rural lifestyle is more conducive to

immunity building, so on two factors the urban areas really suffer, genetically of course it

depends, it could be equal urban and rural.

So, from the point of view of phasing a pandemic, Covid 19 like pandemic we need the

settlements or regions or the country need resilience, communities need resilience as well as

individuals, people need immunity. At present they are heavily tilted against urban areas, we

need to build in resilience as well us people need to build in immunity.

Still India from in very kind of a critical stage sometime between May and September, steadily

the situation improved and it has come down to a stage where we can say they we have done

remarkably well and that is not on account of any planning or not account of any planned

development or creating something new but purely on account of management, enforcement,

very strict enforcement of medical advisories and managing to see that how things don’t spread

so that is these measures in fact if anything similar strikes our cities this is what need to be

followed but people are not very careful they don’t follow regulations and what our advisories

are there in spite of that, but government missionaries have done remarkably well.


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Now I am just presenting here how we have India has fared in comparison with other countries

some of the best performing countries as far as Covid is concerned I have taken only one

indicator that is mortality rate, no of deaths per lakh population, when you compare Bhutan for

example there has not been any deaths and when you see these are the best performing countries

Bhutan, Thailand, China, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India all are tropical countries

and all are kind of developing or kind of less developed countries and when you see the

urbanization rate of all of this only china has exceeded 50% but still there is no country which

is or the urbanization rate more than 60% so that is really remarkable.

And then some of the worst in contrast, worst performing countries of the world, the topmost

Belgium the number of deaths per population is highest there 169.2 deaths per lakh population

then USA 102.0 deaths per lakh population in comparison India’s no of death is 12.3 per lakh

population and you see the urbanization rate, they are they are all about 70 there is a kind of

correlation between urbanization rate and the death by pandemic.

When you come to India the best performing states are Lakshadweep, Dadar, Nagar Haveli,

Daman and Diu, Mizoram, Bihar, Jharkhand Uttar Pradesh. I will take Bihar, Jharkhand and

Uttar Pradesh they are kind of least developed, less developed or kind of difficult to manage

state but they have done remarkably well when it comes to coping up with pandemic in

comparison with more urbanized states and union territories like Maharashtra, Puducherry,

Delhi, Ladakh but here we see there is no correlation between the density and the urbanization

rate the percentage of urban population so there is no correlation ship. We have Ladakh which

is very low density and as well as urbanization levels having very high mortality rate and at the

same time very high-density states like Bihar for example so Bihar is doing very well.

And then within the state of Madhya Pradesh when you compare districts again you find there

is a clear kind of correlation the districts with low urbanization rate and having low mortality

rate and they also have low population density, so when it comes to districts within Madhya

Pradesh we see that there is a positive correlation between density and urbanization level.


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Now I take three issues here, there are many issues which emerged during pandemic and this

is right in the beginning the unprecedented migration and forced migration of urban labour

force it was a return migration, something like they estimated something like 6 crore people,

migrant workers, they went back to their rural homes.

The detail information Is not available they were living in rented, they lost their jobs after the

lockdown and they were also evicted from their homes because they couldn’t pay rent most

probably they must have been living in rented chawls or hutments so they have to go back

without any job they had to get back. And it’s a wise thing that they went back to their rural

areas because the rural areas from the point of view of pandemic it was safer more insulated

and better off and they had something, so in urban areas there was no provision of sustenance

and no arrangement was made so they had to and this was massive and it’s like a tsunami an

exodus unstoppable and during the lockdown also this happened, this has to be something

which is one factor, now it’s all over there is nothing but this is a kind of emergent situation,

very complex situation and this has to be tackled at the national level now my only suggestion

is that to the rural.

So you concentrate on the rural areas, these people have come from rural areas to the cities so

you develop rural areas so this people, this kind of migration is not there or simultaneously the

cities need the rural labour force in construction sites and either maybe in factories and other

trades in that case you have to provide accommodation you have to provide for their housing

and then community facilities and you have to make arrangements for their sustenance, even

during future pandemic times so that is what I have suggested, what needs to be done?


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So, develop technology for rural application so that the rural areas only have agriculture and

animal husbandry to bank on, so now you have to make it. Because they have enormous

initiative resources and potential to develop and be self-sustaining. Introduce vocational

education in rural areas, ensure implementation of rural development programs and policies,

because the government is the last five-six years, they have announced a lot of rural

development programs but they have not been implemented well or fully so they have to kind

of improve the mechanism to see that this programs are implemented for example, this online

transaction and digital transactions of various affairs.


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The rural areas are not prepared and they don’t have connectivity and they don’t have smart

phones and they don’t know how to use it so who will do that, you introduce net banking but

the people have to be educated, people have to be provided with, where I live there is no

connectivity there is no internet connectivity so that is the situation, so make available

broadband network, now the government is talking about that and hopefully they would

establish and then other thing is rural workshops and rural innovators, technological innovators

they are very intelligent and they have enormous practical knowledge, that has to be made use.

Unfortunately all this technical institutes, engineering colleges they have not done anything

towards developing our technologies which are required for Indian development or Indian

situation so that is another issue that has to be taken up apart from that you need if rural areas

are so small that you cannot have independent rural hospitals then at least have the facility of

mobile hospital and mobile libraries, mobile schools, mobile labs all these things should be

there that is possible, so even if the rural areas population wise or settlement size wise cannot

support or can have its own institutions but at least have the facility and as far as cities are

concerned have affordable liveable housing. That is what I said just now. That’s the first issue,


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Second issue is Education, education what the Covid pandemic have affected. Now clearly

online education is going on including all this IIT’s, NIT’s, SPA’s and engineering colleges

the well to do institutions they say that we are going on with online education but online

education is not the same is the images tell you it’s not same as interactive education and they

clearly as far as school is concerned they clearly lack recreational facilities sports facilities and

you cannot and you make a four year old child five year old child face the computer screen

laptop screen and then try to learn from it, somebody who is there, who is not there it’s all

virtual.so this is clearly not good.

Nobody is ready to discuss this aspect so we have to think of online education is good it’s okay

it can work during this time but it can never be a substitute for real school where people go


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there to meet their friends play and be there and do lot of team work field work, these things

are not there.

What happens to all that workshops and field exercises and practical’s and labs, nobody is

talking about that so what will come out of this technical institute’s when there are no labs

when there are no workshops so this is a serious issue, so as far as schools are concerned in

cities schools should now, they have to be within walking distance and they have to start

working as a resource centre for everyone it should be open to everyone and school facilities,

infrastructure facilities should be open to all. We would come to that, it’s a question of

management.

The third issue and the final issue that I will be dealing with is travel and transport and traffic,

so during pandemic, during lockdown and containment and as a result of that travelling in

public transport of course was discouraged it came to a nil, total stop, its good actually so now

without this public transport operation of public transport and without even so much restrictions

on private transport movement, so how will people know, how will they get to work and get to

other places where they have other business.

What I think is to make cities walkable, we have to think and re think on how cities should be,

so large cites will not work in such cases even it is large we have to make it into small self-

containing units somehow retrofitting into that and new development has to be very compact

and very walkable and which can traverse and it should be self-sustaining, self-sufficient in all

these facilities and each and every mohalla never should have actually parks and it should have

schools and within walking distance should have certain facilities which will help in managing

the situation.

I have something in hand but I have already exceeded the time so I am, these models are

available alternatives are already available which will make it less difficult less traumatic and

less problematic in cities we have been developing our cities in the wrong direction and it’s a


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very good opportunity now the pandemic has given to completely reverse this trend and put

planning on its head or its legs.

We have been running planning on its head but now it has to be on its feet so that is what I

would say, we have to think of and technology is going to play and it should play very important

part in it and all the institutions should be workshops, kind of transformed into workshops and

experimental places for innovative technologies, technologies which would suits individual

region, individual country and individual community.

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Finally, I stop here with an image of a city which we have designed. This city can be a city of

3 lakh population, it could be a town extension of 3 lakhs, you can travel through one end to

another without encountering any traffic and it’s completely walkable from one end to other

end. It is self-containing and self-supporting, so that is how it is making use of all green

technologies so it is kind of possible we need to do a lot of exercises in retrofitting as well as

in city expansion as well as in new city planning, but I would say that whatever we may do we

may be made to do it should be, new cities will be compact and walkable, pedestrian oriented

and innovative.


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3. Panellist - Prof. Dr. N. Sridharan

3.1. Introduction of the Panellist

Dr. N. Sridharan is the Director of School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal. He is the

chairperson of the Educational Standing Committee of the professional body of Institute of

Town Planners’ India and vice-president, Regional Science Association, India. He was

Director of School of Planning and Architecture-Vijayawada, and a faculty with School of

Planning and Architecture, New Delhi with over 33 years of experience. He has published

widely in national and international journals on urban governance & finance, peri-urban

development, rural development and spatial data infrastructure. Sir is associated with numerous

international institutes, like University of Cologne in Germany, University of Florence, Italy,

University of Paris, University of Amsterdam and University of Twente (ITC-Enschede), The

Netherlands, and, International Institute of Ecology (IOER), Dresden, Germany.

Figure 2: Dr. N. Sridharan presenting in the webinar

3.2. Presentation

Dr. N. Sridharan, SPA Bhopal, presented in the webinar and discussed about the various issues

related to the urban planning and pandemic to the attendees. His discourse of the day is as

follows.

First and foremost, you know that the pandemic has been going around for a long time now

beyond what we expected, it is going beyond our control as well. First and foremost, it has

been briefly discussed by Professor Shankar earlier, we started with concentration in terms of

metro cities and then going into other cities as well in terms of primary cities and then going

into other options even extending it to the rural areas and peri urban area as well. Now I have

tried to discuss something about the future how it going to come out with that and then we can

try to link it with the current scene and how you are going to change it. Now because we started

off in the case of Indian context, we started off with the master plan and then in between diverge

from the particular thing, the master plan still exists, we put little bit thing down, we don’t want

to do much work in terms of master plan for record and as per act it is there as master plan. But

in between started from 1995 we came out with JNNURM and now we are shifting to smart

cities.


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That means master plans we are not shifting in terms of project. Now weather it is good or bad

and how it is going to affect in terms of pandemic and other thing, yes because the master plan

was not going into in terms of evaluation or monitoring every five years or ten years as initially

planned for. So, in a way it is enabled as to into JNNURM and smart cities to go back into this

and also like AMRUT which enable us to access into this. That’s something which is positive

aspect of this pandemic situation.

Second, even in this case we are not thinking in terms of the future we are still talking about

that now the pandemic is coming how to address this issue for the short time now the long term

in terms of density and in terms of zoning. Now we have shown that is one aspect, second

aspect in terms of inclusion and exclusion and third aspect in terms of mobility.

Now if we go into the details of it the first aspect, in terms of density. Density is not necessarily

forcing us to that kind of pandemic though it has this impact on that but even in the worst

situation like in the situation of Dharavi where the high density existed we are able to manage

the whole pandemic situation that means it has given us an opportunity to walk into even in the

informal settlements and how to address the issue of the pandemic in the master plan as well.

That means it is not that we can always say that because of informal settlement we will not be

able to brand it as not part of planning process. So that’s something important to us to go back

and see that issue first.

The second issue is in terms of bringing in aspect of regional planning because now the

pandemic as forced us from the kind of metropolitan city and other major cities to go into the

peri urban as well as to beyond the rural areas. Now we are glad because of this pandemic there

is an issue addressed by the government of India to go into the details of rural development

which is digitalized now which is something great to us and how we bring that into metropolitan

region aspect of it and also linking it to the regional aspect in terms of district and beyond that.

That is something which is important.

The next part is in terms of bringing the inclusion and exclusion which we talked about the

informal thing that is one issue the second which is important is within that, previously we

never addressed the issue in terms of age the aged people into this master plan or other thing,

maximum they talk about children we talked about way back in 1996 and discussed a little bit

about women but we never talked about the senior citizen, even I accept going into the census

we not detailed in terms of how to integrate it into the master plan so this is a good opportunity

we have started putting it in terms of digitalization and trying to put it into master plan is a big

challenge for us to how to take it up.

The next is in terms of mobility, now in terms of mobility there are two issues one is within the

city where we came out even the metro rail has stopped for a long time and how to go about,

how they move about this has also given us a challenge to go into other mode of transportation

which forced us to drew them from the core city to rural area. So, this kind of different

formality, different kind of modality is coming, that is a big thing which is challenge which we

can integrate it into the master plan for the future.

The next aspect is in terms of planning process itself, so far we said that the master plan the

various development authority we never thought about bringing in except in terms of

stakeholder meetings other than that we could not do anything now there is a good opportunity


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for us to do in terms of citizen science, how to bring in the citizen science, how to sit even at

home and even discuss about it through all the social media and then integrate them into the

planning process. So, this is something which is totally emerging in terms of accepting this

technology in terms of one digitalization, second in terms of citizen science itself through this

process of digitalization that’s a good thing for us to do it. And the next aspect is in terms of

Swachh Bharat or sanitation itself now if you go into rural areas, railways or airports you see

cleanliness that comes in because of pandemic. Now can we take it and do it as a regular basis

and bring it as a part of master plan. Okay this has to be done in terms of zoning level, in terms

of ward level, how to link it to that level that is something very important.

And the next aspect which is different dimension in terms of city size weather we still continue

with this kind of city size because even to this day we have not come out in terms of a strategy,

in terms of urban plan at any of the state, except in terms of Kerala they came out with a strategy

for the entire state but no other state has come out with how to go about in terms of city size

distribution. How to address that issue in terms of master plan. How to go about into detail

level of linking district plan which is been talked about 74th CAA in terms of spatial planning.

Now again I go back into that issue that government of India, ministry of Panchayati raj we

just completed something through digitalization of how to do in terms of spatial development

plan for the villages and linking it to the Rurban cluster and to the district plans. So how to

affect it, because again there is a big challenge for us because the town and country planning

act is not discussing anything about the country aspect of it in terms of spatial plan. None of

the except one or two states none of them have gone into in terms of how to do the village

planning, spatial planning. They talk about economy, they talk about various programs, skill

development everything, but in terms of spatial development still there is a big challenge big

gap for us in terms of development. So that will help us in coming out with a settlement

structure for the state as a whole, that is something which is very very important for us to go

into that.

Now the next aspect is in terms of productivity because spatial plan as such is not to do much

into the economy except in terms of providing that, now the productivity also has to be linked

into value capture, because of subsidization, the productivity of the city, productivity in terms

of employment opportunities how to come out. We have to integrate it in terms of finance, in

terms of employment which is a big challenge for us and overall the two issues which are very

much a big gap in the whole master plan and other things, one is in terms of research to

urbanization itself, we don’t have a urban or rural body to do a proper research and come out

with futuristic trend we don’t know how much is going to be in terms of future.

We talk about all the problem which is current now and for the next 10 years, we don’t know

what’s going to happen in 2051, when the total population of 2041 is going to go down, so how

to go about we don’t know. So the second aspect is in terms of digitalization, how to integrate

the whole process of digitalization, integrate them okay one aspect is in term of GIS but beyond

GIS how to bring in in terms of remote sensing how to link it to that and the most important is

in terms of SDI or spatial data infrastructure in terms of governance itself. How to bring in the

SDI in terms of governance from the ward level and below the ward level also which we talked

about in the 74th amendment and bringing it and integrating it into the master plan.


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So these are all the first rounds of aspects which I want to discuss about because there are some

lot of positive issues which are brought in by the pandemic something like social cohesion

which has been possible and also in terms of family links, binding which has forced us into do

in terms of housing because there is going to be a distribution in terms of housing areas as well

and also the positive aspect in terms of sanitation and swatch Bharat what we are talking about.

So in all there aspects what we have missed out is disaster because pandemic as far as this

disaster is concerned its fine but beyond that fortunately in case of other disaster like cyclone

and other thing there has been much below in 2019, so you are fortunate but that also comes

together then it is going to be a big challenge for us in terms of addressing the issue which the

SDG’s have been talking about for all the 17 SDG’s which they talk about. How they integrate

them into the master plan. That’s going to be a challenge.


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4. Panellist - Dr. Uttam Kumar Roy


Dr. Uttam K Roy is Associate professor & faculty-in-charge of spatial planning Lab, at

Department of Architecture & Planning, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He holds

expertise in affordable housing & technology systems, spatial planning & land management,

policy and planning. He has worked as Architect Planner at West Bengal Housing

Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (WBHIDCO), Assistant Professor and nodal

officer, HUDCO chair, Administrative Training Institute, Government of West Bengal,

Kolkata.

4.2. Presentation

Planning- Response to pandemics: A review of housing typology and Mix-Land use

Interim findings of the topic were presented by Dr. Uttam K. Roy. The presentation along with

discourse is attached herewith for reference.

I am very happy that this institute is taking lot of actions in multiple directions so that we can

have a comprehensive response to the city to protect people from the future pandemics. Now

we all know from the current pandemic probably this is the pandemic which we are seeing for

the first time in our generation. Therefor there are lot of planning from this pandemic and we

have realized that the pandemic has shaken the very basis of the knowledge or the expertise we

have, we do for our planning and management of our cities. So, I will talk on not the pandemic

etc. I will talk only on the pandemic to this planning precisely on two aspects. Now we know

that after this pandemic there has been reverse migration and so many things happened and as

a result we have from the government side have been taking actions and rural planning the

rental housing like in Madhya Pradesh government etc. but when we talk about the fundamental

subjects on planning, land use planning, housing, infrastructure planning how actually do, now

Figure 3: Dr. Uttam K. Roy presenting during webinar


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in contrast whatever we teach as we are in the academics and also practitioner there are few

principals and models those are completely shaken and this need to be re-looked, revised and

revisited. One is housing typology, the housing typology we propagate in our cities for making

new cities. Professor Shankar was mentioning about the correlation between the rural and urban

and urban and urbanization etc. now if I take the clue from that, like in cities any city take the

cities In MP or any other states major cities the one major problem is that the high density and

high density due to the developer driven very high density housing. Now we propagated in the

academics and the practice that compactness density more mixing but now after this pandemic.

Please follow this terminology that is confinement, distancing, separation etc. so the question

is how we can maximize or we can bring a balance between both the factors. And we can make

the future cities either by retrofitting or by making new cities in a better way. So what are the

housing typology options we have can we relook at all those housing options and indicate one

or two housing options which can balance the density factor and other factors which can work


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in a better way for the future city, this in number one aspect I will talk about and I will talk

about in reference to some case study.

Second aspect I would just mention is the land use, you know that as a physical planner land

use planning is a very essential part of city planning. Now in the land use planning by

opportunity or by historical reason whatever, we have been following a approach of segregated

planning largely we have taken the segregated land use planning from the western countries

but classically we have been following a mixed land use planning more community interactions

walkability etc. how we can bring the mixed land use planning in our cities which can resist

the future pandemic also. These two aspects I will share now for doing this there are many

other planning aspects for example mobility infrastructure planning etc., may be some other

occasion we can talk about that.

For housing we know that we have largely two different typology that is group housing and the

plotted housing group housing basically is developed by developers, cooperatives and


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organizations by a group of people and usually it offers a high density and density is a very

important tool for the planner for example a city like Mumbai or Delhi of Kolkata or Indore

they offer in some areas say 800 to 900 population per hectare of the net land use or net area

that net land use density is required to achieve a affordability in the housing because more the

density the land cost is shared by more people and as a result the housing is more affordable,

but to do that what we have done we have invited the number of developers in our cities and it

has become an extreme developer driven cities, for example say Gurgaon 30-40 years back we

have invited developers to develop a city like Gurgaon very recently like we have been

discussing with the authority.

Now in Gurgaon it is like tall towers of developers driven housing but lacking the infrastructure

and other aspects which is detrimental to the pandemic management. So, what are the other

options the plotted housing and other developer driven group housing. So, I am sharing only

few slides and on basis of that I will try to share my thoughts on that. So, we have the developer

driven group housing, plotted housing, we have also tried in few of the cities like cooperative

housing and employees housing.

I will present a comparative study to show how those kinds of typologies can be better in

comparison to developer and the plotted housing particularly given the pandemic situation.

Second, I will discuss the mix land use the plot level, composite level and the zonal level how

it can be used for the planning of the cities. This is one case study I would like to talk about,

the case of new town Kolkata, it emerged after almost in the new millennium in the year 2000.

Along with the developers housing as a part of the planning group I was involved there so we

tried to bring few more typology and one major typology was cooperative housing, plotted

housing because plotted housing is not affordable for maximum people and also employees

housing, it’s like the plot is given to some organization and the organization developed the

housing and they allots or puts the housing on rents to their employees, that is another typology.

And the cities, after independence we have developed our cities our new urban extensions with

mostly like plotted housing or mostly with predominantly the group housing. Two extremes

are there the plotted housing has less density it cannot achieve the optimum density to offer

affordable housing unless it is situated at the periphery of the city the core of the city is very

high cost of the land. The developer housing, it can offer a very high density of the population

but it has the limitations like too much congestion, too much density, non-homogeneity across

the people, so many issues are there.

So, to compare with that we brought several new typologies, this is the township plan, the land

use plan and I will show just one representative sector layout plan. This sector had four

neighbourhoods, you can see the dark yellow that is in the periphery of the neighbourhood this

is the residential land earmarked for the cooperative housing and the light yellow is the

residential area for the plotted housing and in the cooperative housing we developed three

particular categories one is small cooperative i.e., a group of 8-10 likely minded people can

make a cooperative and make their own house. It is like their own house developed by the end

users so no developer is involved in this development. Second is the medium size cooperative

i.e., 32 members and third is the large size 64 and 126 members.

The advantage of this modular system was that whenever we allot the plot and there is

discrepancy between the supply and demand the plots can be amalgamated or distributed into


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multiple corporative in the module of 8 members. Now if I tell you the result first of all it got

a tremendous demand out of one plot we got like 10-12 applications and it was allotted and

now 60-70% plots are developed by the housing cooperatives after the pandemic we took a

small project and we tried to compare between the developer housing, cooperative housing and

plotted housing. In terms of density, in terms of few other parameters but now I would like to

show how the cooperative housing fairs in the density.

Now advantage of the cooperative housing is that since it does not involve the developer, the

likeminded people, they form the cooperative and they purchase the land from the authorities

and they contract the architect contract the contractor and they make their own house. They

have the flexibility of the design, flexibility of their phase development they have their own

management of managing of houses. So, it’s far better manageable than the developer housing.

Now the criticism it got during that time was density can it offer the density like the developer

driven housing, so we took the comparison between the cooperative, developer and the plotted

housing. I will show just the final results. Now here the orange line shows the density of the

cooperative housing societies we took around 40-50 projects across the new town Kolkata and

we took another 40-50 projects, the blue line represents the project developed by the developer

house and the purple line shows the density of the plotted housing.

Naturally we know that the plotted housing cannot offer the density like the developer housing

but if you compare the blue line and the orange line, between the cooperative and the developer

housing you will see that both have the comparable density in fact in some of the points like

the density of the cooperative housing is much bigger the reason is that may be all those pockets

have higher size of the cooperative housing like 64 member or 128 members. Now those larger

cooperatives are also given to some organizations. Suppose some corporate office they want to

develop their housing for their employees so those plots is much better for development by the

organization.

So, on those pockets it is much higher even than the developer housing but otherwise it is

comparable. Therefore the corporative housing can offer a homogeneity across the end users

can offer a better and balanced density in compared to the developer housing and also since the

end users are known there is a complete reduce of the speculations, the transfer, in the second

hand and third hand transfer of property etc., and the management of the property is much more

beneficial and much more easier and another thing I was thinking, when there is a tower of 20

or 30 floors developers housing, people within the blocks are using the same lift, same stairs

for the vertical circulations so the probability of the touch from the lift or the mixing of the

people are more as the heterogeneous people are living there, the congestion is a particular

block, but corporative housing can offer an optimum balance between the segregation

distancing and the density.

So, on an average we found density between 400 to 500 which is achievable in cooperative

housing. So here one reason is that whenever we make our future neighbourhoods the

neighbourhoods must be mixed in terms of housing typologies like we did here maybe the cities

will customize in a different way so that’s the first findings I would like to share with you.

Second is that, I would like to share this particular element. Now a days we talk about the

mixed land use, walkable neighbourhood, the grains etc., now when we start research on that


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we saw that the mixed land use is very essential nature of how we plan our cities from the

ancient times medieval time in India, but due to some reasons, after independent or so we

followed the segregated land use, but from the literature we found that even the mixed land use

doesn’t have the proper classification, proper indexing and proper norms, so we tried at our lab

to develop few classifications, few norms and few principals.

Now I would like to share very briefly the terminologies and the norms we developed and its

application in some other projects. Now one thing we observed is that the mixed land use

planned and unplanned (no development authority involved people are doing their own i.e., the

shop and house or shop and school or school and house together something like that) out of the

unplanned there are two components one is lawful which can be retrofitted with little bit

changed and can be aligned with the kind of building code and regulation another is unlawful

which can be subject to law enforcement.

Within the lawful and planned MLU we have identified three particular typologies of the mixed

lad use, one is Tonal MLU, these terminologies are given by us, Tonal is like there is residential

neighbourhood but up to 10-15% other land use is mixed across the plot, across the cluster in

the neighbourhood, so here the principle land use is residential it is not more than 50% of the

total land use, in comparison to that the Composite MLU which is a composition of more than

two land use and none of the land uses are more than 50% for example we are mixing the

residential recreational and the commercial maybe 40:30, 30:30 proportion, if you see the

pandemic situation most of the infections and the spread happened during the movement and

transport everything and the movements are made between the home to work, home to school,

home to recreational spaces.

So, if we can mix all these activities within the neighbourhood and sector by using Tonal and

Composite it can offer or limit the movement within the essential movements and reduce the

future pandemics. Another is Zonal MLU, it’s the combination of tonal and composite within

a particular zone a sub city and that can offer much more variety so this can be subject to zoning

code.

Now what we are doing in the city for Patna recently, the Patna land use master plan is

developed by the government of Bihar now we are doing the zonal development plan of the

Patna metropolitan area. So, we are trying to apply this indexes and norms for the city of Patna.

You know that Patna or Patliputra is a very famous ancient town we are trying to bring in that

same nature of the mixed land use but in a better way, in a systematic way so that we can have

the better resilient cities.

So in the Patna metropolitan area instead of going through the segregated land use within the

framework of the master land use plan we are trying to bring the mixed land use in the zonal

level in the neighbourhood level a semi form based zoning and also land pooling by the

cooperative and the developers, the land pooling is done usually by the government authorities

it takes longer time 8 years, 10 years and it gets delayed we are trying to bring this land pooling

even by the cooperative, cooperative housing as we discussed in housing typologies.

Now we bring the concept in the land assembly, that’s another concept that we are trying to

bring here, may be in another few months I will be able to share more findings from that and

create mixed land use zone, so that people are not forced to one part of the city and to another


26

part for daily necessity they will get every necessity within their neighbourhood and the cluster

for the day today basis by design by the practice, so that’s the major direction what we are

trying to do for the city of Patna.

I would like to conclude my brief discussion on these two directions that the moment I took

forward or impose any planning housing restriction on the people, it may not work flexibly in

situations like pandemic. So if we involve people not only in the development of the housing

but also in the development of the land use and the zoning, participatory zoning, it is more

flexible, more acceptable and not only that it offers a balanced density balanced homogeneity

between the people and it can at least partially can give a better situation where the post

pandemic management is fare is easily manageable and definitely it will offer a better planning

outcome for our city. So, with this I once again thank the institute for calling me in this

presentation. Thank you very much.


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5. Panellist - Prof. Utpal Sharma


Prof. Utpal Sharma is the Dean and Director at Institute of Architecture and Planning, Nirma

University, Ahmadabad. With over 3 decades of multifaceted professional experience. He

was the Dean at the Faculty of Planning in CEPT University and contributed to develop the PG

programmes. He was instrumental in setting up the CEPT Research and Consultancy Unit

(CRDU). Prof. Sharma has worked extensively across the country and Asia on prestigious

urban projects, Master Plans, Zonal Plans, formulation of Vision Statements, Housing Policy

and Urban Design and many more. He is a recipient of HUDCO Design Award and the Prime

Minister’s Award for Excellence in Urban Planning and Design. He has numerous lectures and

papers to his credit. He has been in expert committees and held advisory role to Government

and non-Government International bodies.

Figure 4: Prof. Utpal Sharma presenting during the webinar

5.2. Presentation

Prof. Utpal Sharma, Nirma University presented in the webinar and discussed about the various

issues related to the urban planning and Post pandemic urban resilience to the attendees. His

discourse of the day is as follows.

There I am putting few thoughts about post pandemic urban planning situations. So, there are

so many people who went back home rented a lot of difficulties etc, fencing this is an

opportunity to talk about urban planning how to make it better and so that we can respond to

emergency situation like pandemic or any other emergency situation how our urban planning

in India can respond.

Now one of the major changes before I talk about the solutions. I have always wanted the major

issue of Indian cities, if the inequality or being non inclusive whatever may be the urban

planning practice that we have borrowed basically from the British. Our masterplan

preparation, guideline etc. and we are leaving left half of the people, the other half of the people

the other half of the people live in slums, or they also work in the informal sector they are part

of the city but they are never being part of the formal planning process. And we have not will

agree and still now we just say u not do it.

And that is one of the major reasons why that they are so much people running away, so much

of affect that is happening so much of spread of the disease in the urban areas. This is one of


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the major issues. And it is like any other issue like we have to talked about climate change in

a city that you have to bring in summer post pandemic you have to take care of it., you know a

talked about mudra there is an earthquake in 2001 then we begin to talk really how falsely our

city planning and we link by-laws with it so somehow in India, it is more like we need to have

a disaster to know get a wakeup call to make good city planning situation. Otherwise we are

mostly trying to do at a kind of private benefitted cost of public space, like crossing on the road

if u will provide a garden etc. etc.

So, there are other issues that people are here talking about the whole issue of u know like a

man selling there is a newspaper article saying there are so many people have died because of

pollution. Adaptive environmental pollution may not be the factor in city planning but which

he adopts now we have now not incorporating this. And it is more of a hand of the pipe kind f

a solution that’s ok now what to do. But if we are talking about the ecosystem services have a

city planning to a equi-relate to rural urban interface, level of densities, amount of open spaces

that we integrate into the city to talked about a kind of balance between the nature and the built.

There are so many people who are expert talking about a this is a good density and this is not

a good density I don’t want to get into it but I need to talk about ecosystem services, talk about

right kind of balance of built and unbuilt and yes any density can be good provided we are able

to provide an equal amount of social facilities, open spaces, and infrastructure. if you able to

provide then yes a a high density can be good and if you are not able to provide a low density

can be a bad.

Now, what is happening is either to know, in our Indian planning we made the master plan like

know very rigid for 20 years and they get approved by the government. They don’t make any

meeting, to be approved by there no funding institute meeting, no planning implementation

meeting. There is no manpower that is required to implement the plan is not there. It is just like

a plan to get approved it like a painting. And at the end our regulations are so flexible for

people are at a level of a plot basically it meant for residential you can make it into commercial,

you can have a small industry there, or you can even convert it to guest house or a medical

store or even a hospital. So, at the lowest level we are so flexible that the overall masterplan is

of no sense. When you look at the other parts of the world, we are more flexible at the top

We have the concept plan at the larger level but when we find to compare at your local area,

the urban design guidelines, the building regulations, the activities are very specified so that

you know what your planning experts may not across.

In India you put this in reverse, now given in this scenario maybe I would like to say that Indian

urban planning right now is in shambles.

We are actually, we have a lot of plans that is made that is not getting implemented on ground

or because of may be esteem. The one of the major issues in Indian urban planning will be like

the planning is good or bad that is one point but other is that is it ok where to have the funding

to implement a plan like this? Where is the institutional mechanism to make it happen? How

to get a land which is required for a role of physical amenities to really implement the plan?

We do not have such very clear-cut mechanism. And the whole urban planning is the very

expensive process. Now when India will become independent, we are less than 10 % people

who live in urban areas. Our urban planning is left to this state or to a local municipality.

It is not the responsibility if government of India. So that putting some money in the form of

smart -cities to help some small development, to develop some local pocket. Some


29

development to show the guideline. But urban planning is expensive now this with 30-35 %

population is living in urban area; this is contributing to the 70 % of the GDP. This is the cities

that are the earning member of the family. But we are not planning back the resources that is

required to really provide the required infrastructure. And states are financially broke

municipality there have been even no money to pay the salary of the staff. Are we talking about

the putting in of metro system, you are talking about the sewerage system, Drainage system,

water supply, road network, it is you really don’t have the resources? Now you may have the

beautiful plans of cities after cities in India not a single city will have funded 100% water

supply coverage. Mostly cities will not have 40% - 50% is covered in sewerage systems. Storm

water drainage need not to be talked about, road network is so litty what is required by standard

and with away what you have is so inadequate. So, we may have beautiful plans, but on ground

it doesn’t happen because, we keep funding and the funding has to come from the centre

because all the tax they do produce go to the centre.

And they levigating money to state in the form of a lollypop like a smart city. It’s like telling a

poor guy who is hungry, if you do not find bread you can get a piece of cake. Okay I think this

is not really right way to do it and it needs that its constitutional changes to bring urban planning

as a concurrent list so that it is a responsibility of Government of India to continuously put

additive resources to the urban planning implementation throughout the country. And without

that you talk about infrastructure provisions, provision of open spaces and amenities to the poor

people, simply it is not there.

Second issue is the whole issue of land and as you know the land acquisition is the very difficult

and you know go for some court cases etc. Gujrat has some town planning schemes

mechanisms etc. other places do not have. But you need to have the schemes and laws that will

make the space required for public spaces, like road open places, that is free of cost. And we

cannot struggle to not have. Because many of the cities have beautiful plans.

Basically, we have to talk about finance, land issues that I talked about. Then what is happening

in that because we need to get a basic infrastructure is right for the city. Then you talk about

like every state we must have an urban policy as to get a settlement pattern do you need the big

city or smaller town how do you inter connect it we do not know. And every state has a one

mega city like Andhra has now Hyderabad, Karnataka have Bangalore, these are all going out

of control because we don’t have an urbanisation policy who really talked about settlement

hierarchy and talked about a kind of balance development. So, we need to have that and these

are all the basic changes we need to be worked out.

Other issues that if the 50 % people who live in Mumbai, will live in slums they only have

10% of the total land so can you have 10 % of the land of the city provided to the poor people

for free of cost because it is not about doing a multi storey building for the poor people but

give a small piece of land to 30-40 sq. m. where they build an incremental housing. And if you

able to provide so much space to road, open spaces, amenities can you consider that housing

for poor people as a public service and a job of the government to really provide the piece of

land to the poor people to build there housing. If you are not able to do that will still have half

of the people out of the planning system. Our urban areas are contributing 70% to the GDP and

out of the 70% contribution 85 % is from informal sector. They are working from slums they

are working on a footpath, how we integrate the informal sector into the design of public space

and these are the kind of challenges that could have and that’s why we have to talk about.


30

There you have talk about yes you can work from home now then you change the urban

planning that talks about communication theory. You don’t have to travel much may be 1/3 rd

of the people or half the people can work from home and you can talk about more of integrated

planning or local area planning where you can go to the place of work by walking or may go

to school by walking, and you talk about walkable neighbourhoods, I think all these are now

possible things. But you see huge pandemic as a situation to rectify the basic planning process

that will totally lacking. Other part is that who are the planners who make the plan who make

it.

The planners we are producing the planners from our school of planning they are not finding

jobs, and it is one of the lowest rate of planner for million people who are making plans are

some bureaucrats, some other people who are professionally not qualified to make plans, and

India we get a state in net 30 years to build all the infrastructure in all the cities emerging we

are going to leave now because now the economy is moving but you don’t have the right kind

of qualifies people to land the job or even act for urban planning who say that urban planners

does this work and this is cannot be done by anybody else and needs that kind of specialisation

& expertise is required for that and because it is not there it is die hard need of the country to

have proper planning but you don’t have the proper manpower who really do it. We don’t even

have an act for it. We don’t have any mechanism for it so may be that we talk about the

pandemic as a situation to rectify few of the basic things, if you are not able to put this situation

in place then we have no future.

We are basically talking about like a situation it is like a fire fighting, today there is some traffic

problems and one solve a junction. Water supply leakage in the pipe but we have to have the

basic infrastructure we can talk about the image of the city, the character, the city for future

and we can do all of that provided we have the basic resources, basic way of handling the land,

you have qualified people to make the city plans I think then only you can talk about our

planning in India and if the pandemic be the situation we can reflect back saying that ok this is

the wakeup call for Urban planning in India.


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6. Panellist - Dr. A. Nuno Martins


Dr. Afonso Nuno Martins is a Researcher at University of Lisbon, Faculty of Architecture,

Centre of Research in Architecture, Urbanism and Design (CIAUD), Lisbon, Portugal. With

over 12 years of experience in teaching architectural & masters programs in Portugal and

various research projects addressing humanitarian architecture, risk and resilience and informal

settlement upgrading. He has received the National prize of the MPAT (Ministry of Planning

Administration of Territory). He holds expertise in humanitarian and sustainable architecture,

eco-tourism, cultural landscapes, building and urban design. He was the chair of the global 8th

International Conference on Building Resilience, held in 2018, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Figure 5: Dr. A. Nuno Martins, presenting during the webinar

6.2. Presentation

Dr. A. Nuno Martins, (CIAUD), Lisbon, Portugal, presented in the webinar and discussed about

the various issues related to the Architecture, Urban design and urban planning and their

relation to pandemic as a disaster to the attendees. His discourse of the day is as follows.

It’s really an honour and pleasure to be here discussing with you this important issue of our

time the impacts of the pandemic regarding our cities and implementation of resilient measures

and resilient strategies for improving the living conditions of people in this difficult time. I

would like to share with you today is few insights regarding my attempt to cross urban design

and architecture in the pandemic and also another topic that it has been not the mentioned today

but for me it’s pretty much connected to the impact of the pandemic is Disasters.

For me this pandemic needs to be understood as disaster. So, in this project we were starting to

develop, we call it’s a biological disaster and I think this understanding makes a big difference.

If we look to the pandemic as disaster we immediately need to apply a inter disciplinary view

and we need to implement measures that bring together different professionals, different

stakeholders and with this may be we can address the problems that our colleagues were

presenting today because the pandemic has now brought many problems to people it has


32

brought many restrictions it has brought many impacts on health not only on the people that

has already died unfortunately which is a very tragedy so many people dying every day,

everywhere people going to hospitals many families had suffered with unemployment, with

destruction of small business, lifetime business that families build with big efforts were

severely destroyed with this economic impacts are very touched by professionals and

specifically talking about Portugal for example and in general if we talk about Brazil as

example.

So, looking at this pandemic as biological disaster make a sink what have been learnt about

dealing with other urban disasters. I think urban because knowledge people are mostly living

in urban areas which is affected to the pandemic also had bigger impacts and larger impacts on

the cities and especially in areas that were referred in the last presentation in slum areas and

the informal sector and precursors houses and neighbourhoods, in peripheral areas of our bigger

and mega cities.

So looking at about what had been learnt about disasters and trying to see what have also we

learned about previous biological disasters about previous pandemics and we in fact have to go

back to the early 20th century and we called impact of the for example the Spanish flu which

affected 500 million people in the world while affected and supposedly killed 50 million

people. It’s interesting to see that many problems we are facing now they had also to face those

problems in those times.

The high rate of mortality is linked to the lack of responses to that Spanish flu there were no

antibiotics, there were no vaccines off course. And after death we had not exactly a pandemic

but we had phenomenal tuberculosis which is also a brief disease connect to the brain function

of human beings and particularly in Portugal where we were largely affected by tuberculosis

as many countries still are and what was done when the tuberculosis has spread, it was also a

huge outrage widely all over the world in 30’s, 40’s & 50’s all human in 60’s when they are

50’s & 60’s when came the antibiotics and also use of the DCG’s vaccine we could stopped

tuberculosis but tuberculosis is still a problem in many countries like such as in Brazil for

example.

So, what have we learned about dealing with these disease with these urban disease as well and

in this project we are trying to bring lessons from responses that the society in general gave to

this tuberculosis disease and one of the main or may be the most important response actually

was from architecture.

Architecture was very important in to do with the tuberculosis because the only sink people

could do it was actually use maths or keep distance I don’t like these expression social

distancing in the pandemic and corona virus has impacted very much on mental health and I

see one of the impact on mental health is pretty much related with this social distancing that

we are forced to do and so I can use the expression physical distance like more than social

distancing.

Well also to think about meaning for social distancing in fact I think we need to preserve our

social proximity and not social distance that means that we can off course keep physical

distances because it’s necessary to not contaminate others and not to be contaminated, but we

need to be socially close to each other’s. I think that is more than ever to do it right now. So,

for these architectures has gave a response to the tuberculosis disease which was the senatorial.

Today I was very much happy to hear about housing typologies actually it’s one of my areas

of study housing typologies, I mostly studied housing building typologies. But senatorial it was


33

housing typologies which was the real response to tuberculosis. So, when people got this

disease if they had lucky, they could went to senatorial and then they would stay there and be

in quiet place with good architecture good spaces.

Normally these sanitories were placed in parks. These parks could be old forests where they

built the sanitories mainly the administration they called very good architects to design this

building we had fantastic these sanitories across the Europe for example some of them were

designed by Ar. Alvar Alto. So, myself with my students we are looking those experience of

the sanitories.

We understand that we can learn a lot from this architecture design of sanitories. How to

improve sunlight, how to improve natural ventilation, how to protect not all the patients in the

spaces but also the medical professionals, the medical staffs, the doctors, the nurses, all these

people working in the hospitals which with this pandemics we are also highly affected in

terrible way because some of them had to spend several weeks or even months without going

home because as they were exposed to the disease. Because they are treating patients, they are

afraid of contaminating their families so the people staid living in hotels, or in some trailers

near their houses so they tried to find some alternative solutions to avoid to go home and

contaminate their families.

So, these sanitories actually had many solutions and many design solutions to all these kinds

of problems including the problem of keeping the contact between patients and people who

infected and their families.

What we have seen with this pandemic is there are many situations that are very sad such as

for example the impossibility of saying good bye to grandparents to our parents who are dying

because we know that this disease is killing mostly the elderly so this is a very sad and very

dramatic situation not have the possibility of keeping hands with these people our beloved

parents.

So these sanitories also had some solutions that we could look at those architectural design and

see what they did for example here in Portugal, the sanitories had connected to the rooms they

had large veranda’s and balconies and not only the patient could go outside and have good air

to breathe and take sun and we know that sun is also important to strengthen the immunologic

system but they could also with these spaces the veranda’s, these balconies, we could see they

are parents outside the buildings and contact with them and keep some contacts.

And also, we saw that recently the most people are also dying in tuberculosis is assumed houses

for the elderly. And we see that when the pandemic when they outride, they had to close and

many people was prevented from contacting parents and elderly people were dying and they

could not say good bye to their parents.

The problem is that the architecture of this building type of this senior house also may be not

appropriated to the pandemic, to deal with this disease or maybe we need to rethink these

building typologies. we need to rethink the spaces so that not only professionals who are

working there don’t become infected but also that the patient can get a contact with their

families. There are many solutions now theories and its possible to use simple solutions i.e.

leave doors and windows transformed in ways of contacting keeping the site contact using

acrylics transforming walls in kind of mingles and doors and windows and through mobile and

other communication systems people still can visit their parents there and keep this contact to

each other. I think this is really important


34

So, I mostly concerned about the relation between the pandemic, the contamination issues and

design, urban design and architectural design and we as architect and designers what role can

we play what can be our direct contribution to this. Of course, we are not the only players and

we are not the magicians who will solve the problem. But I think we need to be a part of the

global solutions, global response together with other professionals together working with

psychologies, sociologies, and trying to find solution.

Myself with my students that’s what we are trying to do we are taking these for example the

design brief of the unities, health care unities for inclusive care for corona disease and

transforming dignities in health parks that also provide solution for housing, not only for

accommodating the patients, but housing the medical professionals, and housing for the

families that prevented from seeing their parents and we are looking at the previous lessons

that our area of profession can bring to us so I would like also after providing these insights

and looking forward to this talk now.


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7. Interactive Discussion Session

After the presentations of all the panellists an interactive discussion session was held among

them. The panellists expressed their views and comments regarding the presentation topic and

ideas that was shared during the webinar. The discourse of the discussion session of the

panellists is as follows.

1. Dr. R. Shankar:

It is been very enlightening to know diverse view points on the same topic we all discuss

various aspects and various kinds of impacts of pandemic on community, on cities and even

beyond cities rural areas in the country. But talking about what Dr. Martins, he said very

interesting points on health buildings, health workers, and the community, senior citizens, what

happens to these people, and what kind of provisions, what kind of preparedness the cities have

to take care of the situations they find themselves in all of a sudden. So there is a very

interesting thing one is I thing is instead of they mentioned about senior citizens, senior citizens

wherever they live. Here in India, traditionally the senior citizens they used to live with their

children’s, that’s it like a joint family two three generations live together, in that case what

happened is in pandemic situation they don’t have to do anything the burden of work is taken

care by the younger generation and even grandchildren.

But in recent times in urban areas, we find the senior citizens on account of various reasons

having to live in certain communities. Now new designer categories have come up for senior

citizens, various economic categories of senior citizens. But one remarkable thing I find in

certain regions particularly in south these senior citizens, they are insulated. They have made

such provisions there cities have responded to their special situations so they can order things

they don’t have to go out and do shopping , they can order things online and when it is supplied

to their reception area and they can pick it up from there in the same way medical help is also

can be ordered online and then the doctor’s visit and so they have been housed.

So, they are very well provided and very well taken care of all by themselves. They themselves

become a community, it’s not in just a building, there is a lot of open spaces, gardens, they can

do there walk, recreation, physically be fit gym is there, some prayer meditation and lot of such

spaces are there and they can do gardening so this kind of post retirement lifestyle and they

voluntarily be go there. And also have an option of even having guest there. They don’t have

to cook their food there is a dining hall and kitchen so whatever is required is provided to them.

so, it’s actually they find it a very good option of post retirement very relaxed and joyable and

a second life and they have also an option of having back to their children and they can also

come and we have not followed in India any western models of senior living. We have kind of

diverse and have experimented in recent years, all these have been come up in last 15-20 years.

Second thing now you mentioned about balconies and then having expression to sun fortunately

in India we are blessed with lot of sun excess of sun. somewhere I read, recently that exposer

to sunrays is particularly early in morning some rays is very good on immunity. So earlier I

mentioned that rural people are more immune it is because they work depending on the season,

they work bare bodied directly exposed to sun and during the early morning hours, there is lot

of vitamin-D and a lot of expressional positive beneficial rays from their skin. And then they

work with the plants, the agriculture, the horticulture it has beneficial effects on their body and

then added to that they believe in kind of their lifestyle as a preventive measure against

pandemic like virus attacks. So, these people are blissfully ignorant of what is happening

outside. They are in their own world and then going on with completely uncut of what is


36

happening in the rest of the world. They can continue with their work with their lifestyle and

living with their cattle’s, taking care of cattle’s.

There is not a single holiday, their work is not even affected for an hour so completely

following their schedule and that is really amazing, Now is that is kind of an ideal situation and

if 70 % of the people are living there now is it not worthwhile to kind of at least try to transplant

some of the characteristics of the lifestyle in cities. That is what to know how exactly we can

transplant that. It’s very good thing you raised very good points that is not raised by other

panellists.

2. Dr. A. Nuno Martins:

You have a very good point and thank you so much your comments are very interesting. Let

me just add something that I think that this question that you made about people leaving to get

in co-housing for seniors or in rural areas this brings the idea of why they are not so affected

by the pandemic. I found this idea is very interesting and you brought me the idea of what is a

disaster? The disaster is something that is never natural, its always connected to vulnerability.

Disasters are not natural; the virus is natural itself but maybe for example, we have disturbed

the ecosystems so much that to the point the virus jump from its species from any animals to

people. And this problem we have with cities any bodies in architecture, and density is not

natural they are closing by ourselves.

So, it’s important to link that firstly disaster are not natural because we keep saying we are not

taking responsibilities but when you look to these rural areas, people living there safely and in

these co- housing for seniors we see that they find solutions to get less vulnerable. Vulnerability

is the key word to deal with pandemic to deal with resilience. So, how to reduce vulnerability

is the way that actually the United Nations Framework For Disaster Risk Reduction

(UNFDRR), it’s the way forward to reduce vulnerability. So, there are many ways to do that

and I am happy to hear that you can have these large families there and people staying together.

But how to may be inside the house to make the elder less vulnerable, and how to make houses

less vulnerable to this virus for example and another virus. Because this is not only the problem

of corona virus but we have to be prepared for the next virus for the nest pandemic.

Thank you for these adding ideas.

3. Dr. N. Sridharan:

Different dimension I want to bring in. there is something that is not impossible for a sample,

focussing, refocussing on the metropolitan when it comes on masterplan. Say one of the person

who has given some chat questions also that I want to just address that issue again to some of

the panel experts. So when we come in terms of Kumbh mela we talk about Haridwar, we talk

about almost like 10 to 15 million people coming to picture in 15 days and we are able to plan

it those kind of disaster never exist in case of kumbha mela because we are able to plan for

such a huge population coming in its almost like a metropolis is coming in for 15 days and

then again this goes off or de-structured or deconstructed later on. And as per a study I was

recently going through Prof. The Rahul Mehrotra, he says the biggest and beautiful in terms of

Swachh Bharat, or whatever you talk about is something very good which is happening and the

cleanest city a Kumbh Mela that happened. So, when we can do that for 15 days a metropolitan

city, I think we can address the issue to the land use which is we talking about 20 years

masterplan that’s is one issue. The second thing which is also reinforces the thing what Mr.

Martin also talked about. Previously when we talked about security we mostly mention about

the crime, now the security has come to the point of health security as well as in terms of land

security. Both has coming into different dimension because the affordability and the other thing

comes in both are the affordability are not only for housing, it’s also about the health that comes


37

in. we can have the access, whether we can give the access let us say to the vaccine or not that’s

also a bug question. So, what kind of security we talk about both in terms of physical security,

health security, and land security all we talk about.

The next may be the different dimension I go back to the digitalization. In the digitalization,

previously the distance was considered something as a what we call the death of distance. The

grandpa knows about how to use the zoom and skype and now we go back into distances back

and that is because of digitalization. Now we are talking about smart cities and centric

governance through digitalization. When that comes in how do you bring in terms of resilience

and efficiency in the master plan. Which means the digital economy, automation and tele-

medicine all these things getting link up to the master plan. Which we say know that which

means one must have to link up of the standards for the masterplan. Because we try to do in

terms of conductor of the old city but now in addition the coming out with the standardisation

we are to discuss that what kind of standardisation we have to think in terms of master plan or

to go back from different infrastructure and then take this is what we take it for year. So the

redefining the masterplan itself is a big question how to do it in terms of standardisation and

how to bring it in terms of the various levels right from the let say ward level to the site level

to the city level or the region level how do you do it is the biggest question we need to ask

ourselves for us.

4. Dr. Uttam Kumar Roy:

I would like to add one point like various aspects have come up in the nice discussion for the

senior citizens aspect I would like to mention that just to share one experience that one model

is that senior citizen there ever about their future life and they try to get housing from the

developer. Another model I have seen like same with a co-operative housing like 32 members,

32 people who are in the age group of 50’s they are formed a co-operative and the way they

have designed the co-operative building considering there another 30 years or 20 years and

very meticulously made a design and the life within in the campus. So that another model which

can be developed by the senior citizens, for the senior citizens. But one thing I would like to

mention they can do within the premises whatever they want to do for the betterment of their

life.

But one thing they cannot do that is the city infrastructure for example in India you wouldn’t

find not a single city where a senior citizen can walk freely on the road on the footpath. We see

the people walk in the carriage way because the footpath is blocked and since people work in

the carriage way it is blocked or it is having congested. How we can bring a basic necessity

and basic character of the people that they should walk freely because we don’t have the

continuous ways of footpath so that’s very much affected and faced by senior citizens, people

with disability or children. so that’s I think another very important thing we all not only the

planners, administrators, all city managers to look into at a very urgent basis.

This is the no. 2 point I would like to mention. Another important point is that since the

pandemic has made rethinking of our managing of our cities now another parallel activities

should come into the academics, because the way we teach the students at the various levels

starting from the school level, the university level, the research level we should without any

delay we should bring the changes in the academics very soon. How the future architects and

planners, managers, they can bring the city more flexible way. Prof. Sharma, told that yes we

make the city plan for 20 years but there is no flexibility in one webinar one of our colleague

told that the city plan should be like Husband, it should look good but it should work.

But our city plans, masterplans they don’t work. They look good but they don’t work because

that’s not flexible. How we can bring those flexibility right from the educational level right

from the academics that’s the I think another very important part that we should consider.


38

5. Prof. Utpal Sharma:

When I am hearing everybody, and I talk about a lot of macro level issues that what needs to

be set tried. Before you really talk about the old people and streets that needs to be walkable

and people you know already ventilated courtyards, veranda these are all the do’s that can be

done that is not, but I think in our whole urban planning picture we will shamble if this is not

just there. And if I remember I think like you know plaque in London or the fire in London

that’s how the building bye laws came. I really think it’s difficult because it not there that

means we could change and we could plan our cities etc. from where you started getting the

building regulations the one building is separate for one another for a disease to go for one to

another. The whole of the other issues is will come in formulation bylaws.

Similarly, in case of the city of Ahmadabad, I was associated with the earthquake and we realise

it so much of illegal construction and faulty buildings way designed in the buildings, soft

storeys etc is resulting in lot of building getting damage in higher income area whereas the

people live in old city there is nothing happened to them. And it is the great learning for that

about what issues we have in our urban planning.

Now if you talk about Covid-19, one of the issues that can either happen you know for large

cities, even in Ahmadabad now it is happening lot of people are beginning work from home

and it may not be a temporary phenomenon may be for a size of chunk of people to do work

from home and it will totally result in a very new way of looking at a city structure because the

mobility will be different and it may involve much more area of planning for walking,

bicycling, walkable neighbourhoods etc. etc. it may have a very different kind of implication

on city planning and I think we can look into it and convert that into an opportunity of big city

planning and what we may be trying to follow the golden models of land use transport,

everybody go to place and come back in a traffic jam but now we are able to work from home

and it will live in a walkable neighbourhoods, pedestrian streets etc.

I thing need that an opportunity for doing our city planning and this may be very relevant.

When the same time also like Prof. Uttam is saying now, we have a mixed land use it is now

very designable but there is no space for the people for walk, because the space was occupied

by the hawkers and rest of the space is occupied by parking where the people walk, people

walk on the drive way. Now my colleague from Portugal says that design of public space,

Urban design where do you do the urban design that will need a space first where do you get

that space first. So, we have to really look at all levels. But it is a wakeup call for urban planning

in India.


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8. Interactive (Q/A) Session

Towards the end of the webinar there was an interactive session including all the participants

with the expert panellists. The participants had raised their comments and questions to the

panellists in the chat box during the presentations. These questions were answered by the expert

panellists. The discourse of the Q/A session is given below.

Question 1:

Prof. Sarika Agarwal:

The question I raised are regarding the housing stock and the availability of the like, so much

of the construction, like housing which is available in the cities and the situation which we are

actually observing with the kind of rental situations and all where people have moved their

cities to their home towns and all. So how do we see the future of the construction industry in

the near future in the next decade. This was one of the concerns that we actually pondering

upon so I would like to know from you sir like Prof. Uttam sir is the best to answer this question

to me?

Answer:

Prof. Uttam K. Roy:

It is already established that we know that there is a high ownership of housing, maximum no.

of ownership by one individual and as a result there are housing stocks which is lying vacant

no body is living there. And on the other side people who are living in the slums or in the roads

now I have only two suggestions one is that the immediate suggestion is that how we can make

the rental housing act and under housing structure in a way so that those houses which are lying

vacant that can be given on rent for the needy people so that’s what the government is doing,

we are also working its one part. That we can do right now. But that is not the long-term

solution, long term solution can come only if we have some control mechanism in terms of the

accumulation of the property. In a country like India no individual should have more than one

housing in one name. So, I think this is my personal opinion that within few years we have to

do something like that as a long-term solution. But for now, we should encourage more and

more rental housing and create rental housing.

Question 2:


What I was wondering about is employment in the construction industry, in cities where the

construction was happening in terms of the housing sector and now this housing sector has

been stuck so much in terms of housing stock availability so what kind of employment

opportunities we can create in the near future and how this construction industry will be

thriving or surviving so that is serious concern because we know that in the construction of

roads and bridges the construction is happening but when we talk about the residential sector

the housing sector or commercial sector in terms of the buildings and all so there is we have

some what very big impact ?

Answer:

Dr. R. Shankar:

It’s actually a question of supply and demand. Look at to any construction, even factories they

leave it to the contractor if there is a demand of labour it is the contractor manage to get the

labour, skilled, unskilled, highly skilled, it is their job, it’s part of their process of getting it

constructed done. So, whether its Industrial project whether its civil engineer project,


40

architectural project they only get it done. Or even in a factory there are in circle areas where

the contractors first should get the labourers to the factory, they don’t advertise the jobs and

then they get a more or less on a daily wage or monthly wage low paying jobs are there. So it

is become the responsibility the interesting thing is there are always people, millions of people

looking for jobs, daily jobs, weekly jobs, monthly jobs, seasonal jobs and wherever they are

and these people are there in the villages and then there are always jobs available not

necessarily in the same location but in cities either nearby or far away.

And then there are brokers in between they tell these people who are in the villages there are

jobs available they so they go get that job and these jobs may be for 2-3 months or whenever

there is a lean period, they go take up the job and then come back. Don’t be worried about the

will happen how to come up with suggestion it is always happen. The thing is we in pandemic

created a situation where these people all of a sudden because all this projects came to a stop

and all these people lost their jobs over night and when they lost their job and the premises

were locked up and so these people were forced to leave their temporary shelters, shacks or

whatever accommodation was provided tin shades they were provided, they are asked to leave

because the contractors didn’t have income, the construction project didn’t also have any

money to take care of the labourers or the workers and so they had to leave for their homes. It

is going to happen, by now, they have now came back to their original place of work or jobs,

or different place wherever there is jobs so it will kind of when there is demand people will

come there, so it is for the construction industry or any kind of development projects which has

a lot of jobs, temporary jobs, seasonal jobs, or daily jobs that are available, so there will always

be people to fill in those jobs. So, it’s a kind of a situation which nobody can plan, so only

thing is that people are ready to take up the jobs and there are jobs that are available, but both

are not at the same place but they go there people go to the job sites.

And there is also call from the job sites to the people. But there is not any formal organisational

system its informally takes place many times we don’t come to know of these things. But since

I live in the village, and then villagers they all know, sometimes you know a small truck comes

a then pick up the people for a week for a job there so they go.

Question 3:


As we have planned our Kumbh melas and these kind of events in the near past and very well

organised one the specially the Allahabad kumbha was a very well organised kind of thing.

So, how are we preparing or the preparations are being done in the current situation of the

pandemic for Haridwar Kumbha mela which is recently been started? Since you are living in

that area, and will know about the ins and outs I would like to know from you sir.

Answer:

Dr. R. Shankar:

This Haridwar mela is going to be there towards end of this year and also in early parts of the

next year that is how it is supposed to be schedules. There is enough time and anything can

happen between now and then. Planning missionary have already have started now. There is

people who should mainly do kumbha mela planning has not even a single qualified planner

has not been involved in the arrangements of the kumbha mela. Kumbha mela is basically is

management. Management of the situation they know how many people are going to come

from they have been keeping records from the previous melas and how many people visit on

what particular days. There are auspicious days everything is decided so even now they know

which day will be the most auspicious and which day have the maximum no. of the people

because the particular days of the mela when it is good. So, when the calendar is ready, they

prepared for that even a year or two year before. What happens in the kumbha mela is it doesn’t


41

stay? There is a kind of baseline crowd which stays throughout the period of mela which could

be anything like 5 lakhs people then it goes to 50 lakhs people all of a sudden only for 2-3 days

or 4 days so all of this the information is already available accordingly they plan. So, the various

government surprisingly we normally blame the government missionary for its in efficiency

but Kumbha mela is a kind of testing ground for this government missionaries. The police, the

health department, the PWD, road transportation department, all of this in central as well as

state govt. to come into a it tests their efficiency their capability. It’s all managerial, its

temporary, because after the Kumbha mela only a very few of infrastructure building they stay

there permanently and rest of the building and other things they vanished. It’s really a very

interesting thing and the curious thing is there is no qualified planner involved in it. It is a kind

of comment on planners. It’s more of a part of governance.

In fact, the pandemic is also a part of governance and missionaries. And they have enforced it

beautifully. And in fact, when I was during the lockdown period supplied my essentials not

only once but periodically.

Police can do many things but provide the government is very keen on it. This time govt. is

very keen it had the conviction and has the urgency also and it did remarkably well and that is

why India is standing where it is today. And its is on the downward, the pandemic impact has

already gone to lowest level. It has come down from 1 lakh per day to 30000/ day. It is also a

very low here. And all of this people are here very un-ruling. They don’t have an indiscipline.

Particularly in cities in certain regions of city population could be very unrolling they don’t

care for even loss. But in spite of these negative things the govt. has done really well. But the

main thing is ultimately for pandemic like situation there are only 3 things, it used all the

resources to emphasize these three, one is the mask, and social distance and washing to keeping

yourself hygienic and clean. So that is what has really helped. And then police went ahead and

if people don’t follow then they contained those zones. You stay within the zones. So all the

various cities and within the cities various wards and people living there they have learned a

lesson and this will be useful.

Question 4:

Mr. Manish Thakre:

How we can engage local communities in urban disaster planning and governance specially

the role of planners, designers, and architects. If you could share some examples from your

country?

Answer:

Dr. A. Nuno Martins:

This brings the problem of how to integrate people that are living in those more vulnerable

communities and places. How to engage them in responses to human crises such as pandemic,

it’s not too easy to answer the examples that I could share with you could be for example small

interventions very limited interventions but very effective interventions of small NGO’s for

example and sometimes how to differ from academic’s from a group of students and professors

to been to these slums, and to some informal areas and settlements the places here in Portugal

and Europe and the immigrants from middle east refugees. And what we tried to do is to engage

these people in local solutions to not only be part of the design but also of the buildings of for

example public spaces, improving public spaces, improving houses, sometimes with these

NGO’s they have some institutional support they came the part of larger interventions such as

to re- densification of some areas. Because we know densification brings problems mainly

health problems like tuberculosis I have mentioned earlier. So I have been for example

watching and studying some interventions by NGO’s and local govt. in Brazil, in Rio de

Janeiro, and what they did is to widen some small streets and demolished many houses to bring


42

natural light and ventilation and this is a very complicated process which requires involving all

the stakeholders and talking to people and making agreements with people because many of

these people go after leave their area and sometimes they can after the resettlement during the

resettlement process some of them will be able to stay there in new houses with pathetic

conditions and some of them will have to leave because there will not be space for everyone.

So, it’s necessary to have a local and community to stablish those open dialogues with local

representatives to the community leaders.

Normally involving the important role of women because they spend more time at home than

men so these kind of interventions helps in clearance of dense areas for example it’s possible

to better the sanitary conditions and with this it’s possible to save lives. It publishes in articles

also; they could save 100 people every year who earlier previously dies due to tuberculosis and

now nobody more dies of tuberculosis on that particular street. This intervention has 800 meters

of road which could every year save more than 100 lives. So, basically, we have impact

between it because it evolved architects, local social workers, local representatives and also the

governance. I have been paying attention to all of you panellists talked about governance, and

how to communicate between designers and local governance, social workers and people is a

big issues its one of my main issues sometime people speaks different languages we needed to

find some translational tools to improve the dialogue. This is one of my main concerns how to

improve the dialogues how to find translations tools between designers, social workers, and

community members, householders. And for these maybe we need our area of expertise or

professional may be open to tools coming from other area such as social interventions, where

they are used to find tools to establish that community conversation and to find ways looking

forward to these people. This requires for example, normally used tool such as the digital tools

but also tools for example mapping tools. Mapping is a very interesting tool because we

understand the meaning and functioning if I see mapping. But also, they are accessible that

other specialists can understand and people also can understand.

I have introducing mapping tools for example in some areas of through the work that I do extra

to university to the NGO which in which I volunteer and in which I sit as a board of the NGO’s

when we go to Africa we talked to people form local communities it covers the construction

of education infrastructure such as schools etc but our first step is to walk people for social

innovation tools and online when we go there we our team is a interdisciplinary team involves

social workers and phycologist and also sociologists and technologists. We have a quiet

different professional, as architects those experience, anthropoglots for example or use their

technique to listen to people to make interview service local services that’s all.

Thank you!

The webinar was ended with the vote of thanks to all the expert panellists and participants

given by Mr. Anshul Puriya, Advisor, CUG, AIGGPA, Bhopal.


43

Annexures

A. Webinar Poster


44

B. Minute to Minute Programme

Webinar

Planning Pandemic Resilient Cities for India: The Road Ahead Organised by

Centre for Urban Governance (CUG)

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis (AIGGPA), Bhopal

On

Friday, 8th January 2021, 1400 hrs to 1615 hrs (IST)

Minute to Minute Program of Webinar

S. No. Timing Programme Speaker

1 1345 hrs - 1400 hrs IST Online Login by

Participants

Mr. Anshul Puriya

Advisor, CUG, AIGGA

2 1400 hrs - 1405 hrs IST

Welcoming the

participants and

introduction of the

panellists

Mr. Anshul Puriya

Advisor, CUG, AIGGA

3 1405 hrs - 1415 hrs IST

Setting up the tone for

the discussion

Shri Girish Sharma, IAS

Director-cum-Principal Advisor,

CUG, AIGGPA

4 1415 hrs - 1430 hrs IST Presentation-1

Prof. R. Shankar

Former Prof. and Head,

Department of Architecture and

Planning, IIT Roorkee


Dr. N. Sridharan

Director,

School of Planning and Architecture,

Bhopal (M.P.)


Dr. Uttam Kumar Roy

Associate Professor,

Department of Architecture and

Planning, IIT Roorkee


Prof. Utpal Sharma

Director,

Institute of Architecture and

Planning, Nirma University,

Ahmedabad, Gujarat


Dr. Afonso Nuno Martins

Researcher, University of Lisbon,

Faculty of Architecture,

CIAUD, Lisbon, Portugal

10 1530 hrs - 1610 hrs IST

Discussion by

panellists followed by

Q&A session

All

11 1610 hrs - 1615 hrs IST Vote of thanks Mr. Anshul Puriya

Advisor, CUG, AIGGPA

12 1615 hrs IST End of the Webinar

Co-ordinators:

Mr. Anshul Puriya Contact no: +91-9826323429

E-mail: [email protected]

Ms. Mausmi Hajela Contact no: +91-8839335432

E-mail: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


45

C. List of Participants

List of participants for the Webinar on

Planning Pandemic Resilient Cities for India: The Road Ahead

Friday, 8th January 2021, 1400 hrs to 1615 hrs (IST)

Via- Zoom Platform

There were 230 participants from various Institutes and organizations who registered through

our poster link for attending the webinar. Out of which 118 participants attended the webinar

with 24 non-registered participants who also joined with us and attended the webinar along

with 5 panellists and 9 team members from centre of Urban Governance. Total 156 participants

attended the webinar. The list of participants is attached herewith for reference.

S. No. Name Designation Organization

1 Mr. A Karthick Associate Professor SVS School Of Architecture

2 Ms. Abhilasha Kumar Student SPA, Delhi

3 Mr. Abhishek Akodiya Research Scholar IIT, Roorkee

4 Ms. Abishika Marshalin Student San Academy of Architecture

5 Ms. Aditi Arora Assistant Professor Lingayas Vidyapeeth

6 Ms. Aditi Gupta Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

7 Ms. Aishwarya Varsha Student Karpagam Institutions

8 Mr. Akash Patel Student MANIT, Bhopal

9 Ms. Akruti Murhekar Student School of Planning and Architecture,

Bhopal 10 Mr. Alok Kumar Pandey Student IIT, Roorkee

11 Mr. Amitabh

Shrivastava

Advisor AIGGPA

12 Mr. Amit Kumar Baitha Project Scientist TRIPP, IIT Delhi

13 Mr. Anchal Srivastava Student SPA, Delhi

14 Mr. Anees Abdullah Planning Assistant Regional Town Planning Office,

Kozhikode

Department of Town & Country

Planning, Govt. Of Kerala 15 Ms. Anjali Katare Student/Researcher Texas A&M University

16 Mr. Ankit Kumar Assistant Professor Institute of Architecture and Planning,

Nirma University

17 Mr. Anshu Saxena Mission Planning

Officer

UNSOM

18 Mr. Anshul Puriya Advisor AIGGPA

19 Mr. Anubhav Arora Student -

20 Ms. Anusha Shridhar Student Nirma University


46

21 Mr. Apoorv Garg Urban Design

Consultant with World

Bank Category A

Project In Afghanistan

World Bank

22 Ms. Apurva Sanjay

Deshmukh

Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

23 Ms. Apurva Sharma Phd Scholar MANIT, Bhopal

24 Mr. Aqa Raza Ph.D. Scholar NLU, Bhopal

25 Mr. Aravind Gifty R Planner INMAAS PVT LTD

26 Ms. Archana Mohanty Student School of Planning and Architecture

27 Mr. Arpit Tiwari India Smart City

Fellow

National Institute of Urban Affairs

28 Mr. Arun Katiyar Architect Vastuki

29 Arun S Das Student IIT, Bombay

30 Ms. Athulya Satish Research Assistant Department of Architecture &

Planning, IIT, Roorkee

31 Mr. Avitesh Assistant Professor Sushant School of Art and

Architecture 32 Ms. Ayushi Dhar Student IIT, Kharagpur

33 Mr. B M Date Proprietor Independent Consultant

34 Ms. Barkha Soni Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

35 Mr. Basant Kumar Advisor AIGGPA

36 Mr. Bhagwat

Jayeshkumar

Maheshkumar

Assistant Professor School of Planning and Architecture,

Vijayawada

37 Ms. Bushra Saba PhD scholar IIT, Kharagpur

38 Mr. Champa H S Director SVS School of Architecture

39 Ms. Chanchal D Modi Assistant Professor Dayananda Sagar College of

Architecture 40 Ms. Chandrani

Bandyopadhyay - -

41 Ms. Chinmayi Saxena Assistant Professor BMS School of Architecture

42 Mr. Deepak Shah Student Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi

43 Mr. Deepak Singh Student SPA, Bhopal

44 Ms. Deepti Pande Rana Associate Professor Amity University Lucknow Campus

45 Mr. Devansh Jain Researcher NTU

46 Ms. Devashree Ragde Research Associate FLAME University

47 Ms. Dhwani Shah Student Nirma University

48 Ms. Divya Jain Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

49 Mr. Dona VS Student VIT University, Vellore

50 Dr Chandrani B Neogi Associate Professor School of planning and Architecture,

Delhi 51 Mr. Durgesh Singh CMO UADD

52 Ms. Faiza Jamal Research Associate SPA, Bhopal

53 Ms. Fathim Rashna

Kallingal

Technical Expert GIZ


47

54 Mr. Gaurav Agrawal Advisor AIGGPA

55 Shri H S Gill Formerly Ed HUDCO

56 Mr. Hari - -

57 Mr. Harisankar

Krishnadas

Technical Advisor

(SDG & Governance)

Deutsche Gesellschaft für

Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

58 Ms. Harsimran Kaur Visiting Assistant

Professor

IIT (BHU), Varanasi

59 Mr. Himanshu Poptani Assistant Professor NIT, Raipur

60 Ms. Himashree

Barchamua

Student School of Planning and Architecture,

Delhi 61 Ms. Ira Jain Research Associate AIGGPA

62 Ms. Isha Kumar Assistant Project

Manager

CBRE

63 Mr. Jagades Vignesvar Research Assistant School of Planning and Architecture

64 Mr. Jagbir Singh Director Amity School of Architecture and

Planning, Lucknow

65 Mr. Jaivardhan Rai Assistant Director TNCP, Bhopal

66 Ms. Jalaja Saji Advisor AIGGPA

67 Mr. Jayesh Soni Architect Self

68 Mr. Jitendra Kumar

Verma

Architect PACE

69 Ms. Juhi Sah Indian Smart City

Fellow

NIUA

70 Ms. Jyoti - -

71 Mr. Karan Barpete Assistant Professor School of Planning and Architecture,

Delhi 72 Ms. Kasmita Basing Lead Program

Management Officer

SEEDS, India

73 Ms. Kasturi Palit Student IIT, Kharagpur

74 Ms. Kavyashree Bale Associate Professor GSSS School of Architecture

75 Ms. Kinzalk Chauhan Ap-01 Amity University

76 Ms. Km Ruby Architect Arch Imagination Studio

77 Mr. Kovida Balaji

Anapakula

Assistant Professor BMS School of Architecture

78 Mr. Kranti Kumar

Maurya

Assistant Professor NIT, Patna

79 Ms. Krati Varshney Div.Urban Planner Akshara Enterprises

80 Mr. Krupa Bharatbhai

Padhariya

Student Institute of Architecture and Planning,

Nirma University

81 Mr. Lalitha Bhai Student Vellore Institute of

Technology,Vellore 82 Mr. Manan Monga Student IIT, Roorkee

83 Mr. Manas Kanti Maji - -

84 Mr. Manish Kumar

Dohare

Consulting Architect MP PWD

85 Mr. Manish Thakre Head Urban

Programme And

Policy

Save The Children

86 Ms. Mausmi Hajela Advisor AIGGPA


48

87 Ms. Megha Kabra Student IIT, Bombay

88 Mr. Nagaendran R Student Karpagam University of Higher

Education 89 Ms. Namrata Ghosh Research Associate IIT, Kharagpur

90 Mr. Natraj Kranthi Professor School of Planning and Architecture,

Bhopal 91 Mr. Nihar Doshi Student Institute of Architecture and Planning

92 Ms. Nikita Gupta - -

93 Ms. Pallavi

Mukhopadhyay

Assistant Professor Dayanand Sagar College of

Architecture 94 Mr. Parvathy R Student SPA, Delhi

95 Mr. Piyush Pandya Urban Planner -

96 Mr. Piyush Soni Architect Airport Authority of India

97 Ms. Pooja Consultant and

Assistant Professor in

BU

BU, Jhansi

98 Mr. Pradeep Kumar

Kori

Urban Planner Urban Development Directorate,

Dehradun, Uttarakhand

99 Mr. Prakash Gupta Architect ARCONS

100 Mr. Pravin Kumar

Tiwari

QA & QC - Supervisor

(Food Technologist)

Capital Foods Pvt Ltd.

101 Ms. Priyanka Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

102 Ms. Priyanka Bansal Research Associate AIGGPA, Bhopal

103 Mr. Raaghav Co-Founder A Plus R Architects

104 Ms. Radhika Mehrotra Student School of Planning and Architecture

105 Mr. Rajendra Padhee Community Planner Self Practioner

106 Mr. Rajesh Agrawal Visiting Faculty Amity University, Madhya Pradesh

107 Mr. Rajesh Nagal Retd Town Planner -

108 Prof. Rama Umesh

Pandey

Associate Professor SPA, Bhopal

109 Ms. Rashmi Malhar

Gandhe

Intern NIUA

110 Ms. Rita Daniel Attendee Architect Emeritus

111 Ms. Rita Ochoa Professor CIAUD-UL/UBI

112 Ms. Ritu Maheshwari Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

113 Ms. Sakshi Saxena Student SPA, Delhi

114 Ms. Saloni Khandelwal Research Associate AIGGPA

115 Ms. Sana Hassan Student School of Planning and Architecture,

Delhi 116 Ms. Sanjukkta Bhaduri Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

117 Mr. Saptami Sarkar Research Scholar IIT, Roorkee

118 Mr. Sarang Bhide Architect Bhide and Associate

119 Ms. Sarika Agarwal Professor ASA

120 Mr. Sashi Bhusan Sahoo Student, Architect SPA, Delhi

121 Mr. Saurabh Bansal Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

122 Mr. Saurabh Kumar

Maurya

Urban Planner Citiyano de Solutions

123 Ms. Savita Lakra Student Maulana Azad National Institute of

Technology


49

124 Mr. Shanthanu Ashok Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

125 Mr. Shashank Shekher

Singh

Student Amity Law School

126 Ms. Shilpa Sharma Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

127 Ms. Shivani Pankaj

Singh

Landscape Architect Freelancer

128 Ms. Shreya Sudesh Assistant Professor Bms School of Architecture,

Bengaluru 129 Ms. Shuja Rehman Student Jamia Millia Islamia University, New

Delhi, India

130 Mr. Souvik Das

Adhikary

Research Associate SPA, Bhopal

131 Mr. Sovan Saha - -

132 Ms. Sruthi Venkat Student Karpagam Academy of Higher

Education 133 Mr. Subash Student KAHE

134 Mr. Sumit Harde Urban Planner and

Bim Architect

Surbana Jurong

135 Mr. Sumit Wadhera Associate Professor Amity School of Architecture and

Planning Lucknow, Amity University

Uttar Pradesh 136 Mr. Surajit - -

137 Mr. Surendra Kumar

Chadokar

Advisor Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good

Governance and Policy Analysis

138 Ms. Sushmitha V Student MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology

139 Ms. Swati Chauhan Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

140 Ms. Sweksha Yadav Assistant Professor Amity University, Lucknow

141 Mr. Tarunesh Advisor AIGGPA, Bhopal

142 Ms. Ujjainee Sarkar Architect SYSTRA

143 Mr. Venus Kashyap Assistant Professor Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical

University for Women

144 Mr. Vibhor Goel Asst Professor UPES

145 Ms. Vibhuti Raina Student School of Planning and Architecture,

New Delhi

146 Ms. Vijaya Kumari M Associate Professor BMS School of Architecture, BMSIT

147 Mr. Vijayan K Pillai Professor University of Texas at Arlington

148 Mr. Vipul Parmar Research Associate SPA, Bhopal

149 Mr. Vishnu P Vinay Research Associate AIGGPA

150 Mr. Vishwa Shah Student Nirma University


50

D. Participants comments

S. No. Participant

Name

Panellist Comments

1 Prof. Ar. Sarika

Agarwal

Prof. R. Shankar How do you suggest about reopening of the

colleges and way forward for the architectural

education in the current scenario?

2. Arun S Das As a compact development lead to higher

densities, would it have an adverse effect on the

resilience, especially for easily communicable

diseases?

3 Prof. Ar. Sarika

Agarwal

Prof. R. Shankar How should we go ahead for the events like

Kumbha mela which is already starting in

Haridwar in current situation? These fairs and

events are the basis of economy of the states and

economy being affected; how should we go

ahead?

4 Arun S Das While classifying cities on the basis of income

and death per million, an important factor to

consider is the age distribution of the country as

age is an important factor which affects

immunity and the developed nations have

significant elder population when compared to

India.

5 Apoorv Garg Prof. R. Shankar I was wondering, whether can we draw parallels/

learn from the special period in Cuba during

1980s in relation to quick retrofits for urban

transformation in terms of socio-economic and

socio-political aspects?

6 Manish Thakre Not a planner! Covid-19 indicated WASH /

Hygiene practices are important rather density!

informed citizen wearing mask and following

instructions is more important + water and

sanitation facilities in low income areas.

pandemic - work from home - urban housing

design requirement need attention! solar/ green

roofing, community consultation and convincing

Political stakeholders in designing resilient

policy with these aspects.

7 Piyush Pandya Dr. Uttam K. Roy Pandemic has shown us the importance of

decentralisation. How do we see decentralisation

in terms of inter- and intra- city development in

times of globalisation? Isn’t it an opportunity to

self-sustaining neighbourhood!? What 73-74 CA

say about this.

8 Rajesh Agrawal Prof. R. Shankar As you have suggested to plan compact cities to

facilitate more comfortable pedestrian

movements, but in today’s era everybody is

going for decentralization to reduce the density.

How you advocate your saying in a good sense.

9 Natraj Kranthi Prof. N. Sridharan

/

How to address the planning challenges due to

pandemic situation in view of the following:


51

Dr. Uttam K.

Roy

1. Lacking / lacking of access to core Health

infrastructure

2. High built-up densities, particularly in the

informal housing

3. No planning standards (such as in URDPFI

guidelines) to address the pandemic situation

4. In the compact development such as in the

case of Smart city

10 Anees Abdullah Prof. R. Shankar 60 million labourers migrated back to their

villages when hit by the Pandemic. Why do they

remain 'migrants' for their whole lifetime in the

cities? Why do the cities fail to blend them in

their social fabric? Why do the working class not

feel home at cities?

11 Prof. Ar. Sarika

Agarwal

Dr. Uttam K.

Roy

With so much housing stock available in cities,

how do we decentralize it and make it available

to all and see the future of construction industry

in the next 10 years.

12 Manan Monga The migrants from rural areas provide some very

basic and essential services in the cities. The city

needs them for its efficient functioning.

Considering this, which of the following is more

important -

1. Working on rural areas so that the rural

residents need not migrate in search of livelihood

to the cities.

2. Making cities more inclusive and

accommodating for the migrants so that they

need not run for life in the face of unprecedented

situations such as the pandemic.

13 Prof. Ar. Sarika

Agarwal

Dr. A. Nuno

Martins How do we differentiate social distancing and

physical distance? In the current situation I do

think that we are not following social distancing

but physical distance more.... we in any case are

connected through virtual platforms socially so

we can’t call it social distancing

14 Prof. Ar. Sarika

Agarwal With many companies on work from home even

till 2025, the real estate has affected a lot as

offices spaces have been vacated and the

employees have been shifted to their

hometowns....in this scenario, rentals, real estate

has been affected a lot thereby affecting the

economy


52

Some Glimpses

Figure 6: Shri Girish Sharma, setting up the tone for the webinar

Figure 7: Dr. Uttam K. Roy & Dr. N. Sridharan, during interactive session

Figure 8: Interactive discussion session among panellists


53

Figure 9: Interactive Q/A session with participants-1

Figure 10: Interactive Q/A session with participants-2


54

Figure 11: Group Photo at the end of webinar

Team- Centre for Urban Governance

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis(ISO 9001:2015)

(An Autonomous Institute of Government of Madhya Pradesh)Sushashan Bhavan, Bhadbhada Square, Bhopal-462003

Tel: +91-0755-2777316. 2777308, 2770765 Fax: +91-0755-277316Web: www.aiggpa.mp.gov.in Email: [email protected]

planning pandemic resilient cities for india

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