Critical Human Security and Sustainable Urban Development in India

As population growth and migration have put increasing pressure on India’s major cities, peri-urban development and satellite towns have emerged to relieve the pressure points as well as to become the drivers of social development. These dynamics have resulted in the transformation of urban space, but in the context of a lack of appropriate governance mechanisms and expertise, and limited planning, consultation and accountability. As a result, these urban areas have also emerged as spaces of inequality, insecurity, conflict and environmental degradation. To address these contemporary urban development challenges, and promote planned, integrated, systematic and sustainable urbanisation, this project seeks to bring together a multi-sector, inter-disciplinary, international team of academics, policy makers and civil society actors at a workshop in Delhi NCR in March 2020.
The partnership and collaboration will strive to contribute to the development of informed, effective and sustainable processes, policies and interventions within a human security framework and in relation to Delhi NCR in the first instance.The collaboration will develop an indigenous, integrated, robust and meaningful human security framework for sustainable urban development, perceived as `complex ecological phenomena within dynamic contexts’ as opposed to separate and unrelated processes and practices. The deepening of these partnership and knowledge exchange generated through collaboration will lead to a better understanding of interaction between physical infrastructure and socioeconomic processes in urban and peri-urban spaces.