Cities for people

India is going to be more than 50% urban by 2030. However, the quality of life in urban India is sub-standard which in turn affects economic, social and human development of the country. We think there is an opportunity for us is to ensure that as our cities grow, they are better equipped to handle the urban proliferation and give a better life to urban dwellers.

At ATECF, we believe that urban planning, governance and citizen engagement are the tools to ensure this change.

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Citizen engagement

We must ask the question, who is the city for? The answer is - for the citizens. Therefore citizens must be engaged in the development and planning of a city. They need to know what they can expect in terms of services and standards and ensure the government delivers quality urban infrastructure to its citizens. Some examples of the work we do are:

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Influencing youth and bringing awareness around urban development to students

We have seeded a film archive called Nagari that has showcased films on water, waste, livelihoods. These are used in academia (architecture schools) for studio projects by students.

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Urban Governance

While at one level we are encouraging citizens to hold their government accountable, at the next level are governments themselves. State and district level functionaries need to be enabled to ensure they can plan and deliver better urban planning outcomes accordingly. We have therefore partnered with Praja to help in capacity building of functionaries to perform their duties related to urban development.

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Urban Planning and Design

We believe that planning is important for a city, and urban development should not happen on an ad-hoc basis, which leads to haphazard urban development and puts a stress on the citizens and the city itself. We have partnered with UDRI on a spatial planning project which compares what the planning act says with what is happening on the ground, thereby culling out the best practices and recommendation across 12 cities.

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We also picked housing as an area of focus as it is crucial for improvements in education, health and other social measures. We supported the construction of Maharashtra’s first ever Beneficiary Led Construction (BLC) under PMAY-Urban developed for the State Government housing board this has resulted in a template for other cities.