ABSTRACT
The opening chapter describes the nature, scope, and design of this book. We illustrate various conceptualizations and definitions of the word ‘city’ and diverse meanings and purposes of ‘planning,’ followed by main concerns and questions motivating our effort that aims to address those interested in planning for the future of an urban India. This chapter also explains the adopted conceptual framework illustrating how actual planning work on the ground is an inherently pragmatic exercise even as the overall nature of planning, at any given space and time, ultimately reflecting the overall disposition and priorities of the larger society within which it takes place. The chapter concludes by situating India’s city planning experience in the subcontinent’s historic trajectory. We pay particular attention to the post-independence period - starting from the bequeathed legacies of colonial rule to early twenty-first-century shifts in national polity illustrating the development of India’s approach to city planning over time - which are then explained in detail in the following chapters.
