November 2018 Issue 13

NEWS LETTER

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Academics @ FP In this issue

Editorial Team

Upcoming Events

The month has officially been a “No-Sleep November”, entailing culmination of an entire semester’s work into presentations and reports for the final Juries.

The Jury-Week kicked off with reviews of the Metropolitan Studio, whose strategic planning approach for Chennai and Bangalore metropolitan regions was appreciated by the jurors, Mr. A. Srivathsan, Academic Director, CEPT University and Dr. Dinesh Mehta, Professor Emeritus, CEPT University.

The Environment studio’s presentation on a ‘Cumulative Area based Environmental Impact Assessment’ framework for Bodakdev was lauded by the jury panel consisting of Mr Rajesh Shah, Member of SEAC, Mr. Gaurav D Joshi, Senior environment specialist, World Bank and Prof Shobhalata Udapudi, Professor & Director - Centre for Environmental Law and Sustainable Development at National Law University, Gandhinagar.

The Urban Expansion Studio’s diverse planning approaches on sites in Ahmedabad and Surat fetched positive reviews from the jury panelists. Architect Planners Ms. Paromita Roy and Mr. Amit Gotecha, Dr. Vidyadhar Phatak, Dean, Faculty of Planning, Ms. Deepa Dave, AUDA, Mr. Brijesh Bhatha, Program Chair, Masters in Urban Design, CEPT University

Aditi RaiAnupama V.S. Arnav PrakashForum ShahGauri VarshneyKelly ShahMukul KogjePrabhanjan PrabhuSameer KumarSaubiya SareshwalaShivangi TannaSophiya IslamSupriya Swarup

M.Plan Juries ............................1B.UD Juries ...............................2FP Lecture Series......................2FP Achievements......................2 Extra Curriculars.......................2Know Your Alumni...................3Ongoing Research....................3Creative Section ......................4

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and Mr. Vatsal Patel, Chief City Planner, AMC were part of this panel.

The Housing studio presented real estate project developments in Ahmedabad. The jury panel consisting of Dr. Vidyadhar Phatak, Prof. Devanshu Pandit, Faculty, CEPT University, Prof. Ashok Kumar, SPA Delhi and Mr. Anushrav Bhatt & Mr. Amit Mistry, experts in Land and Real Estate commended their extensive outputs.

The Water and Sanitation studio also received similar reviews for their contextualization of strategies for Vadodara and sectoral interlinkage by the panelists, Mr. Dipender Kapur, NIUA, Ms. Manpreet Kaur, Ernst & Y and Ms. Bhawana Vasudeva, MSU, Baroda.

The Transport planning studio’s proposals to transform the Surat high speed mobility corridor area using public transport solutions to enhance mobility and accessibility was also acknowledged by the jurors. Ms. M. Janaki, MoHUA, Ms. Swati Khanna, KFW and Dr. Vijay Anadkat, Fellow, Urban Transport, World Resources Institute.

The reviews helped avail constructive feedback for execution of students’ proposals by stressing on the need for more stakeholder consultations, a well framed institutional and financial framework.

M.Plan JuriesSemester End Exhibition Winter 20187th December (Friday) to 11th December (Tuesday)

Winter School10th December (Monday) to 27th December (Thursday)

M.Plan Water Sanitation Studio Final Jury, P.C. CEPT University

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Faculty of Planning| CEPT University|Newsletter November 2018, Issue 13

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FP Achievement @ cept

B.UD Juries

The end semester jury session at CEPT is the culmination of studio exercises which is presented to experienced academicians and practitioners for their valuable inputs.

The undergraduate Urban Design programme held its juries from 22nd-24th November 2018. The Urban Habitat had Parag Udani and Punita Mehta as their jury members who shared their knowledge about urban spaces within a housing project. The Play Methodologies invited Rupali Gupte and Vidya Mohan Kumar to the jury, who discussed small-scale interventions. The Utopias to Heterotopias studio had Jaydeep Bhagth, Vibha Gajjar, Sanal as jury members who talked about incremental housing. The Streets and the City studio invited Vikrant Shinde and Ruchita to share their design inputs about interventions in the core public realm. The Rebel bodies Rebel cities had Pranav Raiji, Rajiv Kadam, Vipuja Parmar, Mehrnaz Amiraslani as jury members and they discussed interventions based on the rebellion nature of the context.

10th to 18th October, 2018 witnessed another charismatic chronicle of Cept garba celebrating the high spirited festival Navratri. Sheri garba on the beats of dhol and shehnai had brought everyone under a roof of tantalizing lanterns and chandeliers to allure the feminine spirit of goddess Durga. This year saw two installations

November brought a coveted addition to Faculty of Planning’s many achievemvents, when Amulya Pothkanuri, a student of MURP 2nd year won the Hackathon event at the “Urban Mobility Conference- 2018” held at Chitnavis Centre, Nagpur.

The theme of the event was “Transform Nagpur 2018” and it aimed at generating innovative location-aware solutions for transport challenges in Nagpur. It was sponsored by WhereIsMyTransport Ltd and GIZ, TUMI. Amulya was a part of Team Zero comprising of seven members;

1. Final Jury, Habitat Studio , P.C. Harsh Gupta 2. Amulya Pothkanuri with her team recieving the award at the ‘Urban Mobility Conference - 2018’ P.C. CEPT University

extra curriculars @ cept

FP Lecture Series

As part of the FP Lecture Series, two speakers were invited – Keshav Varma on ‘Transforming Urban Development in India’ on 02nd November 2018 and Howard Spodek on ‘Interpreting Ahmedabad’ on 14th November 2018 .

The lecture by Keshav Varma started with a discussion about the history of Ahmedabad, how the city has grown since its settlement. Through his experience of working with the World Bank, he explained different models of international cities, with their pros and cons, in terms of development plans. He summarized the lecture

K.L.N.Sridhar Achari, Adithya Bandari, Priyank Parwar, Shruthi Dakey and Sameer Laul, students of urban planning from VNIT,Nagpur along with Ganesh Thakur, Engineer, Techmahindra, Nagpur. The team also won a cash prize of INR 1,00,000.Their Zeroth mobile application provides social, economic, and environmental benefits to the city of Nagpur by providing the users information about multi-modal alternative routes, integrating the details of the emissions, journey cost, and journey time. It promotes the usage of public transport & non-motorized transport, besides providing redeemable rewards to the users involved in safe modes of transport, decreasing the pollution in the city.

with a list of good attributes for the model of a city.

The lecture by Howard Spodek initiated with a video clip of the Chinese President’s visit to India, which was a three-day trip commencing from Ahmedabad. He emphasized how Ahmedabad has always played an important part in the History of India. He concluded the talk through a discussion with the audience and asked for suggestions from them.

Keshav Verma

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Faculty of Planning| CEPT University|Newsletter November 2018, Issue 13

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This newsletter is a student body initiative. For any suggestions, feedback and queries write to us at - fp.newsletter@cept.ac.in

know your alumni @ FP

Mr. Kanha Godha

Mr. Rajesh Rawal is an alumnus of Faculty of Planning, batch 2001. Associated with the profession since the last 27 years, Mr. Rajesh is currently working as a town planning expert at Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office.

made by Undergraduate students of FP Department a chandelier made along the former theme of Prameya and a kinetic aluminium structure. Moreover efforts had been put across in managing food stalls, lighting and security throughout the nine nights.

Mr Kanha Godha is a Housing Planner from batch of 2010. While garnering diverse field experience, this young professional has also authored books and worked as an academician.

SK: How are you currently associated with the profession?

KG: I am currently working with the Technical Support Unit of Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) on Convergence Between NULM & Swachchh Bharat Mission-Urban supported by Urban Management Centre.

SK: What was your experience in transitioning from a student to a professional?

KG: Professional life is vastly different from academics – you need be to be equipped with knowledge beyond your specialisation and play multiple roles. I started as a research associate with the NIUA, New Delhi, then proceeded to become an assistant professor at LPU. Further, I worked as a project officer Urban WASH (M&E) with WSUP Advisory India, New Delhi.

SK: What was your experience in CEPT beyond academics?

KG: The informal environment was a new experience; I reminisce the hostel life, CEPT Garba and parties the most!

SK: What would be your parting note for

Mr.Kanha Godha ON GOING RESEARCH @ FP

A conference paper titled “Assess The Accessibility To Open Spaces Us-ing Public Transport” co-authored by Amrinder Bhatia, a 2nd year student of MURP, and Dr. Abhijit Lokre was presented at the platform; it conclud-ed that a great public space needs a successful public transport system to give the city an impressive image, cit-ing analytical cases from Ahmedabad.Another paper titled “Assessment of Bus Contracting Models – Case Study of Bhopal” co-authored by Kanika Gounder, a 2nd year student of MURP, with Dr. Abhijit Lokre was presented by at the conference; it analysed the impact of the net cost contracting ar-rangement on the level of service for city bus operations in Bhopal.Lastly, Divyanka Dhok, a 2nd year student of MURP, presented a paper titled “Demand elasticities of Bus rid-ership in India: Case study of Banga-lore” which analysed the changes in the ridership of BMTC as a function of the changes in its fare, service quality and the introduction of metro rail sys-tem in the city. It was co-authored by Ravi Gadepalli.

Miss Meghna MalhotraMiss Meghna Malhotra who graduated in 2000 from CEPT with her eighteen years of experience in the field of planning is currently working as the deputy director of Urban Management Centre.

SS: How are you associated with the profession currently?

MM: After graduation, my first professional assignment was in the Urban Health sector and later, I started working with the City Managers’ Association of Gujarat facilitating capacity-building of urban local bodies of Gujarat. We began an urban indicators’ and performance assessment program before the SLB initiatives were introduced. Also, with the help of our mentor organisation- ICMA, we used to build global city to city mentoring partnerships.

SS: Can you briefly explain your work profile?

MM: Currently, I work at the Urban Management Centre. We are working across all the levels in the government- the Central, State and City governments to improve delivery of urban civic services efficiently and equitably. Essentially, we try to support the urban local bodies in providing better services - be it water, sanitation, livelihoods, finance or conservation of heritage.

SS: It’s been a long time since you graduated. But if you try to recollect, how was the transition from academics to profession?

MM: Entering the professional world from academics will hit you. Although, being at CEPT, we were exposed to the professional world through activities and continuous interactions with professionals, but back then, there were no structured internships in our curriculum.

SS: Please share your experiences from your days at Faculty of Planning.

MM: Looking back, I still remember our first laboratory was in Chandigarh.

our students?

KG: You all are immensely talented; do not fear about the future. There are lots of opportunities for you. Utilise the vast alumni network to advance your career.

The city was celebrating its fifty years and were doing field studies on how the city functioned and how the citizens perceived living there. As a batch, this gave a huge opportunity to bond really well, as we stayed there for a long time. Working in the studios, on the campus, the seamless classes from studios to the canteens will always be cherished.

SS: Lastly, I would request you to share a message for the students.

MM: I would like to say that as students, it’s a great opportunity to study at CEPT with the kind of exposure that the institute offers and the openness that it allows to develop your knowledge and skills. Keep the ethos of working hard and stay true and ethical to your professional, it will definitely pay off well.

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Faculty of Planning| CEPT University|Newsletter November 2018, Issue 13

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FP newsletter is inviting creative content from the upcoming issue. Watch out this space from the successive issues. Kindly email your entries to

Fp.newsletter@cept.ac.in

Conversation StarterFP Newsletter I Creative Section

Conversation on Conservation

Wall Art in Dhal-ni-polIllustration by Aditi Rai,P.C. Prabhanjan Prabhu

Ahmedabad city recently commemorated ‘Heritage Week’ from 19th November to 25th November. A buzz of activi-ties— be it a wall painting workshop or exhibition on art and architecture or even fusion music and dance, games or food fiesta – rekindled the spirit. A particularly attractive pol was Dhal ni Pol, a heritage precinct recognised by the UNESCO. However, with celebrations galore, the debate of ‘conservation’ still remains.

With the introduction of an additional creative section, FP Newsletter aims to provide a platform for healthy conver-sations on urban paradigms. The dichotomous debate on preserving the history versus creating a ‘new’ futuristic city continues to linger on. As professionals in the built environment, it is imperative to understand and build on the views of topics concerning the universal habitat. What should the upcoming urbanists choose and support? Please send in your comments to fp.newsletter@cept.ac.in or post on the FP Newsletter social media pages.

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