Our cities, our future

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody,” wrote the American urban theorist Jane Jacobs in 1961, “only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Cities over the world face complex and rapidly evolving challenges. Ranging from climate, to poverty, economic downturns and demographic shifts, cities now need to confront an unprecedented array of issues. Addressing them requires ingenuity and versatility, whether in policymaking, investment decisions or everyday livelihoods. At the UK-India workshop on the Future Cities, we aimed to re-think the city, in theory and practice to confront these challenges.

It was my final stint with the Science and Innovation team and we had less than a month to plan and deliver the bilateral workshop. Working under pressure and tight deadlines, it was exhilarating when the outcome of all the hard work put in was a successful event.

The workshop consisted of presentations by both Indian and UK-based academics, funders, policymakers and industry stakeholders, providing an overview of the issues and research around ‘Urbanisation’ in both countries, followed by discussions on potential future collaborations and funding mechanisms.

The inaugural session had an impressive line up with speeches and presentations from Mr Mark Sinclair, Head, SIN-India, Ms Amita Sharma, Additional Secretary, MHRD, Dr Simon Buckle, Policy Director, Imperial College, Dr Jagan Shah, Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs, Mr Abhijit Ray, DFID-India with a special address by Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO, Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd.

The inaugural session was followed by the break-out sessions on the following themes:

Theme 1 | Leadership and social innovation in urban design and planning
Theme 2 | Towards resilient and sustainable urban infrastructure – Energy, Water, Sewage and Transport
Theme 3 | Reducing energy demand from new and existing urban habitat – problems and issues in UK and India
Theme 4 | Tangible and intangible heritage of cities and their preservation – problems and issues in UK and India

The themes discussed during the sessions were the direct culmination and outcome from the RCUK Roundtable on Sustainable Cities in November 2013. These discussions gave the participants an opportunity to debate on subjects such as how UK-Indian research expertise can contribute to the various themes, how the two countries can work together to address the research challenges which have been identified, the sort of collaboration mechanism is needed.

In the evening, we had a networking reception and dinner with two keynote speakers. Dr Sandy Thomas, Head, Foresight presented her work on future proofing cities. We also had Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Chair, ICRIER who raised the issues and challenges of urbanization in India.

The second day was another full house with presentations on case studies/ live programmes on Varanasi, Uttarakhand and Mumbai – by various IITs and on London by the Future Cities Catapult. An interesting research agenda was emerging out of all the discussions and we seemed to get good coverage across a breadth of future cities topics.

We will be shortly uploading the proceedings from the workshop. In the meantime, here are a few presentations from the Future Cities workshop to give you some food for thought.

We are proud to have been able to bring together experts from India and the UK to share ideas, solutions and success stories. As a follow-up, we agreed that the ‘quick win’ would be to establish a UK-India Knowledge Platform on Future Cities and we will be working with the Ministry of Human Resources and Development to explore how we can set this up. So, watch this space!

See more photos of Future Cities workshop.