Ahead of the formulation of an urban policy for Kerala, as proposed in the State Budget this year, the Local Self-Government department and the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) are set to kick off a series of sessions titled ‘Kerala Urban Dialogues’ in association with experts and institutes from the field to generate ideas and a pathway for policy formulation.
The Budget had also proposed the setting up of a State Urban Commission, which will provide the overall guidance for the dialogues. Policy framers had pointed out that the direction of urbanisation needs to be determined considering the unique socio-economic conditions of Kerala. Further urbanisation in the State would lead to greater demand for spatially enabled and agile governance as well as inclusive planning, which will open up prospects for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural discourses.
“The dialogues are being organised with a purpose oriented towards the urban policy formulation. While going ahead with the policy formulation, we have to structure the available knowledge in the field and refine the various ideas that come up. Urban development should be carried out in such a manner that we don’t lose the unique characters of each region. The format of the dialogues, in collaboration with institutes and global policy partners, with events in various locations outside Kerala too, is aimed at letting the world know about what Kerala is doing in this direction, as well as to attract funding agencies,” said Ajith Kaliyath, Urban Chair Professor, KILA.
KILA will collaborate with leading academic and policy partners for the monthly events that are expected to start this month with a session on ‘New Kerala Urban Policy: Data, designs and Local Democracy’, with Minister for Local Self-Governments M.B. Rajesh, Union Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Manoj Joshi, Chief Secretary V.P. Joy, Thiruvananthapuram Mayor Arya Rajendran, Kochi Mayor M. Anil Kumar, State Planning Board Vice-Chairperson V.K. Ramachandran and others participating. The speakers will be eminent national and international specialists in the urban sector, including policy makers, scholars, urban planners, designers, entrepreneurs and various related stakeholders.
While KILA will anchor the dialogue series, the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in Delhi, Bhopal and Vijayawada, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University Ahmedabad, IIT Kharagpur and Roorkee, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Calicut, are set to be partners in the dialogue series. Asian College of Journalism, Chennai will be the media partner.
Fifteen young Urban Fellows will coordinate the thirty Dialogues, out of which ten Fellows will be nominated by the partnering national academic institutions while five will be selected from young PhD/Post Doc candidates working on an urban sector topic pertaining to Kerala in leading international universities. All the deliberations will be documented and brought out as an international peer reviewed publication titled ‘Kerala Urban Dialogues’ by KILA.
