Irene Anna Antony

UP4000-2

The Development Plan studio taught us to prepare statutory Development Plan for a large city such as Rajkot. It also exposed us to the iterative approach towards planning, where first we began with preparing initial conceptual plan soon after the base map preparation, existing situation analysis and consultation with stakeholders. The subsequent iteration required us to dig deeper into reviewing the past planning efforts, and development trends, and arriving at a consensus regarding the vision and the planning approach for our DP.  The studio required us to explore a range of approaches, from complete control to completely liberal approach to development, and pushed us to make a conscious choice for our own approach. Also, it required us to understand different types of zoning and regulations, such as form-based regulations vs conventional rule-based regulations. The process also enabled us to understand different Forward and Backward Linkages and linking people’s perspectives with on-the-ground conditions.  The final iteration of the DP was the most crucial one, where we learned to bring all proposals together, prepare planning regulations, identify TPS boundaries for implementation phasing, identify projects for estimating the total cost and identifying revenue sources to pay for the implementation.  Beyond planning, the studio required us to learn to make concise presentations with clear and justifiable narratives to the development authority and planners of Rajkot.