Why perform BInUCom?

The total housing shortage in Indian cities is expected to go up from about 18.8 million in 2012 to about 30 million in 2022. However, a substantial part of India's quickly growing urban population lives in informal settlements under appalling conditions and suffering from lack of tenure, threat of eviction and poor infrastructure. This carries the danger of growing poverty and - subsequently - of social and political unrest. The Indian government has addressed this problem by defining “Housing for All” by 2022 as its goal and is currently developing a new, national scheme for urban housing.

The proposed housing scheme of the Indian government intends to support urban poor by implementing the following interventions:

  • Slum rehabilitation for slum dwellers
  • Affordable housing through interest subvention for urban households
  • Rental housing for migrants and homeless
  • Improvement of infrastructure in unauthorised colonies or slums


Very clearly, this situation creates a huge demand for architects and urban planners, who can deal with complex challenges of sustainable social housing and the development of inclusive urban communities:

  • Many authorities and local stakeholder lack well trained planning experts capable of sensibly responding to the needs of informal squatters.
  • Sustainable approaches to support different types of urban poor require well trained academic personnel with a sound understanding of social and spatial mechanisms at work in informal settlements. The integration of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects into architectural training holds high potential for relevant services to the society.


However, Indian HEIs are not well equipped to meet these demands, since curricula in architecture and urban planning predominantly focus on technical and design skills. Therefore, Indian Partner institutions  have identified the following needs for innovation

  • Indian HEIs need to strengthen their relations to the wider economic and social environment (public authorities, companies, community organisations and NGOs) to exchange experiences, build awareness, meet societal needs and accomplish their social responsibility
  • Indian HEIs need to incorporate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects in their curricula for architecture and planning, which is either partly or completely new for them.
  • HEIs lack indigenous educational resources, which reflect the specific Indian context for sustainable housing and inclusive community development.
  • For developing indigenous educational resources, which contain new tools, methodologies and pedagogical approaches, they require specific know how, which will be rendered by European partners.
Last modified: Tuesday, 15 March 2016, 3:43 PM