https://www.routledge.com/Urban-Futures/book-series/UBF
This book is part of the Urban Futures Book Series published by Routledge. We have structured this presentation into 4 segments- 1. Discuss the conceptualization as part of our larger research agenda 2. The Urban Reality of India, Resilience Typology based on the Selected cities in India 3. Resilience Index 4. Our ongoing research
The idea of this volume incubated while working on our previous co-authored book Smart City in India Urban Laboratory, Paradigm or Trajectory? published by Routledge in 2019. Working on the research for that volume, we had a first-hand exposure to the rapidly urbanizing landscape of India especially the medium historic cities. Recent urban programs like the Smart City Mission in India launched in 2015 have subjected these cities to massive and rapid transformations. An academic reflection to examine the gaps and challenges was imminent. Alongside, working on the Building Resilient Urban Communities (BREUCOM) research program supported by the European Union brought us to the point of a deeper understanding of resilience especially anchored to the experience of most vulnerable cities of the global South. The questions of cultural practices and social structures provided the foreground for understanding of our built environment motivated with new thinking and growing scholarship on building better urban futures. The pandemic of 2020 reaffirmed our ongoing research agenda around the questions of inclusion, culture and urban form. Inputs from subject experts, knowledge partners, friends and colleagues from around the world greatly facilitated our academic trajectory especially the BinUCom and BReUCom programs. Together we have endeavored to carry this research forward to cover many more cities and develop a scholarship on urban studies based on the Southern experience. We also endeavor wide dissemination of resilience understanding, awareness generation among multiple stakeholders and strive to find local solutions to pressing global problems.
Resilience as a construct has myriad connotations. This book attempts to understand resilience embedded in the particularities of the urbanisms in Indian cities. We take them as representatives of Southern urbanism, chosen carefully from the vast heterogeneous and diverse cultural geographies of the country. We are aware that many more cities located in the South of the hemisphere could be part of this narrative. Th ongoing research shall cover more such cities centered around the questions of cultural practices and community resilience.
Text & Image: Binti Singh | Manoj Parmar | KRVIA + Breucom Program
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