Habitat School in Mumbai soon

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, IIT Bombay and New School, a university from New York, are coming together to set up an institute for studies and research in urban planning. The school, to come up in Mumbai by mid-2007 on the TISS campus, will be called Habitat School.

TISS is in talks with HDFC Bank, a private sector bank, to support this initiative.

Habitat School plans to start a five-year integrated, residential programme for the students. The programme aims to attract students from all disciplines and would recruit students after class XII. Logic and reasoning skills of the students would be tested to grant them admission. The first batch of will have 60 students.

"The idea is to catch them young. In the formative years, we can introduce them to the concept of urban planning. There are international agencies, which require them to work on habitat planning," says S Parasuraman, director, TISS.

The school is being formed with an aim to teach and research in the area of urban planning. TISS will bring in the social aspects of the subject, IIT Bombay will provide the technical aspects and New School will bring in the design aspect for the programme.

Habitat School wants to promote the concept of urban planning and development in keeping with the natural resources. Urban planning with governance knowledge is an underdeveloped concept in India. The school will introduce teaching programmes with technical, social and cultural environment.

"A city is a part of habitat and cannot be looked at as an independent entity. We need to develop a city planning where the development of the city does not mean extracting resources from remote areas. We need a plan where we do not look at growing a city that is undermining development of rural areas and creating poverty in the hinterland."