Designing Trans-Generational Urban Communities: An Approach Towards Inclusive Cities in the Indian Context

This book examines the inclusiveness of city planning and design to address gaps in policies, strategies and design guidelines for developing trans-generational urban communities in India. Identifying key factors and measurable indicators of trans-generational cities within social, physical, and economic dimensions, the volume highlights the need for establishing age-friendly and child-friendly cities and communities. Through a systematic process of ground data collection, the book explores issues related to health, daily routine, lifestyle, recreation, and socialization within vulnerable groups, considering their physical and cognitive limitations for framing adaptable policies. The volume integrates a bottom-up and top-down approach by integrating the needs and perception of the target group obtained from extensive groundwork with the available theories and literature in allied fields adopting a step-by step synchronized methodology. It also presents the way forward for framing policies focusing on socio-economic security, participation, dignity, care, and self-fulfillment.

Offering rich empirical research, this book will be useful for students, teachers and researchers of architecture, urban design, urban geography, urban studies, urban development and planning, and child psychology. It will also be of interest to urban planners and designers, policy planners, local government authorities and professionals engaged in the discipline.

Basudatta Sarkar is an architect-planner and academician presently teaching at National Institute of Technology Rourkela as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning and Architecture. She has completed her doctoral research from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2016. Her areas of interest include vulnerability assessment; age sensitive and gender sensitive neighbourhood; green infrastructure and impact assessment of social ties in Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterpries (MSME).

Haimanti Banerji, is a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning and the Associate Dean of Continuing Education and Outreach at IIT Kharagpur. She has more than 19 years of working experience with the vulnerable groups in urban Indian context. She is one of the authors of Universal Design India Principles (c) NID, 2011. Her recent contribution towards mainstreaming inclusion in the domain of urban planning and development is the Inclusive City Framework and revision of URDPFI guidelines, and preparation of online courses and toolkits for professional along with UN-Habitat and NIUA. Dr. Banerji is also actively involved in the Global Housing Technology Challenge (GHTC), an initiative by Govt. of India to provide ’Housing for All’ in various capacities. Her recent international academic collaborations include Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania and MIT, USA.