India’s first urban affairs varsity in Bangalore

The Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS) is coming up with its first university at a 58-acre space near Kengeri in the city outskirts.

The institute said the varsity will be unique with the curriculum designed by eminent experts in urban planning to nurture talent in the field. “The building of the university and its courses will be different and based on real time learning; so the planning for the university needs a holistic approach. Until now, the project is estimated to cost about Rs400 crore and the building of the university campus about Rs350 crore,” said Aromar Revi, director, IIHS.

IIHS said it would rope in the best of academicians and professionals in urban planning and even government agencies as the faculty of its university. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University College of London, African Centre for Cities are some of the institutions from where the faculty will be drawn to IIHS. These institutes would also fund IIHS’ university.

“Our faculty will comprise of men and women who have been in the profession of urban infrastructure building from India as well as from a host of countries to share the best practices and guide student teams on how to see the smallest of the situations as an opportunity of good and sustainable urban planning,” said Shirish Patel, member of prime minister’s core group of urban transportation, who is also a member of IIHS.

“India will see eight urban transformations in the coming 20 years and we are not prepared. We do not have skilled professionals to plan cities and town which will have 70 million population, facilities and liveable conditions. This is where our students will play a key role to bridge the gap between the urban bodies, government and private, agencies and civil society to help inclusive growth,” said Revi.

IIHS also announced the commencement of its Masters programme in Urban Process (MUP). The programme, which begins from January 2012, is open for students and professionals from every field. The fee of the two-year programme is yet to be announced.

“The idea behind having students from every background, from engineering to social science to public health, is to create a system of learning where knowledge on various subjects cab be shared and utilised to make urban processes and systems work better,” said Revi.

The course is structured in three layers — in the first, students will study contemporary India, second they will study settlements and environments and third will engage them to practise their learning on the field. Students will be able to get hands-on experience during the course with government and private stakeholders dealing with urbanisation of places.

IIHS is also starting a seven-day short-term course on “Re-Imagining the World Class City” made open for students from all undergraduate programmes and professionals. The course fee is Rs15,000 and officials from the state government have shown interest to take up these courses in urban planning.

Chief of the UID programme Nandan Nilekani is one of the directors of IIHS along with Shirish Patel, Aromar Revi, Rakesh Mohan, Deepak Parekh, Kishore Mariwala and others.