Building Inclusive Urban Communities

Rapid urbanisation is expected to lead to a housing shortage in Indian cities of about 30 million by 2022, which creates appalling conditions for urban poor. The government of India has addressed this problem by defining “Housing for All” by 2022 as its goal. This situation creates a huge demand for architects and urban planners, who can deal with the complex challenges of sustainable social housing and the development of inclusive urban communities. To complement the vertical policy making in India with a horizontal exchange of good practices, the BInUCom project aims at fostering the collaboration between Indian HEIs in Ahmedabad (CEPT), Coimbatore (KARPAGAM), Mumbai (KRVIA) and Vijayawada (SPAV). Coordinated by Univeritaet fuer Weiterbildung Krems (DUK) and with the support of Universiteit Twente (UTWENTE) and of Lunds Universitet (ULUND), the project will: • Support the production of Open Educational Ressources by jointly developing 4 city résumés, 16 indigenous case studies and 16 course descriptions, following MIT’s OpenCourseWare model. • Increase the relevance of architecture and planning studies by introducing multidisciplinary topics like social inclusion, sustainable housing, participatory mapping and environmental risk assessment. • Strengthen the relations between HEIs in India and their wider socio-economic environment by arranging information, consultation and feedback mechanisms with different social actors during case studies, by providing external trainings to stakeholders in each of the 4 cities, by organising 4 local dissemination workshops and 2 national conferences, and by sharing Open Educational Resources and complementary materials via the website. These results will sharpen the profile of HEIs and their responsiveness to societal needs, improve the employability of graduates and the networking between local stakeholders and intensify contacts between India and Europe.