In the Union Budget 2022-23 speech, the Hon’ble Finance Minister announced that “For developing India-specific knowledge in urban planning and design, and to deliver certified training in these areas, up to five existing academic institutions in different regions will be designated as centres of excellence. These centres will be provided endowment funds of Rs 250 crore each”. Accordingly IIT Roorkee, one of the premier technical institution in the country submitted proposal for setting up such CoE on 15th November, 2022. Subsequent to the submission of the proposal, multiple additional documents and addendum was submitted to the ministry. DAP, IITRoorkee is happy to announce that MoHUA has approved an AMRUT Centre of Urban Planning in IIT Roorkee with an overall budget provision of Rs. 10 Crore in two years. The Centre is expected to bring the visible outcome in selected cities and states for identified urban issues on the following themes:

Theme 1. Resilient Urban Planning and Design: Urban Flood and Heat Mitigation, Resilient Hill Infrastructure and Planning, Blue-Green Infrastructure, Water Sensitive Urban Design, Planning responses for Climate Change Adaptation, Integrating Resiliency in Physical Planning
Theme 2: Urban Mobility: Transport Planning, Landuse-Transport Interactions, Universal & Inclusive Accessibility, Walkability, Public Transportation, Active Mobility, Public spaces and terminals, ToD, Urban Streetscapes
Theme 3: Urban Development & Management: Urban strategies and Policies, Indian Urban Models, LAP, TPS, TDR, Station area development, Form-Based Code, Municipal Finance, Training of Trainers, Action research, Multidisciplinary Research and leadership development, Effective Urban Management, Infrastructure planning and Management, Manuals and Guidelines.

A) Thrust area 1: Hill states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh
B) Thrust area 2: NCR including Gurugram, NOIDA
C) Thrust area 3: Any other states (to be taken up later on, subject to discussion)

Major action verticals includes
i) Action & applied research (12 nos projects),
ii) Training and handholding Series,
iii) Publications and repositories (cases and good practices),
iv) Dissemination and Events

Prof. Uttam Kumar Roy, Team Leader (ukroyfap@ar.iitr.ac.in),
Prof. Arindam Biswas, Deputy Team Leader (arindam.biswas@ar.iitr.ac.in)