New Delhi: As the Centre started rolling out smart city project, housing for all and AMRUT urban infrastructure development scheme, the Ministry of Urban Development is working with the Ministry of Human Resources Development to start nine new urban planning schools at different parts of the country.
As per the proposal with the government, these institutions will be centre of excellence as IITs and IIMs have become in their respective fields and will have curriculum only related to urban planning, urban transport and other related issues.
The proposed institutions are likely to come up at Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Assam.
There is a serious shortage of qualified urban planning professionals due to lack of institutions teaching such subjects. The government has, therefore, decided to open new urban planning schools in different parts of the country, a senior official in the Ministry of Urban Development told Deccan Herald.
At present, 25 various institutions in the country teach urban planning, including School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, Bhopal and Vijaywada.
To meet the demand for qualified planners, these institutions will give both bachelor’s degree as well as master’s degree in planning. The main thrust in the study and research is on physical planning, regional planning, urban planning, housing planning, transport planning and environment planning, said an official.
The HRD ministry will be the administrative ministry of the proposed institutions while the ministry of Urban Development will provide inputs for setting up curriculum as per the demand from the market.
Currently, India has about 300 urban planners. These experts mostly concentrated to metropolitan cities while there was huge shortage of such professional mainly tier-one and tier-two cities.
Though the NDA government has launched major programmes to improve urban infrastructure— Smart City and AMRUT and Housing for All by 2022, the government found there was dearth of experts in planning, said the official.
The government is expected to open at least two to three institutions in two to three years, said the official.