Going against the national government's own best practices and the consensus of urban planners worldwide, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) continues to shift thriving urban communities into lifeless high-rise residential towers, ignorant of the economic base the existing neighbouroods provide to their residents, as Greg Randolph shows in Govindpuri.
In a quiet London suburb two rival "neighbourhood forums" put forward under new "localism" laws have brought religious and cultural divisions into the light.
The UK Government wants to make it easier to convert offices to residential use, but it runs the risk of turning valuable commercial space into more empty houses.
As the Kumbh Mela festival closes in Allahabad, Kristen Teutonico wonders why the lessons of this pop-up city aren't being applied to India's permanent mega-cities.
From Western rules of thumb about the affordability of mortgages to an obsession with high-rise private sector developments, India's approach to affordable housing is full of hopelessly outdated assumptions.
Home-based workers in South Asia number in the tens of millions yet remain invisible in urban planning. Shalini Sinha argues that housing and zoning must be reconceived with a focus on home as workplace.
Global urban policy and quantitative research are converging on a single conclusion: that spatial planning of new urban expansion areas is one of the most important tasks to make urbanisation sustainable.
Zoe Green is a chartered planning consultant with Atkins Ltd, with experience in policy and masterplanning projects for both private and public…
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
