Planners in search of work might want to consider looking in India. As Nate Berg reports, the Indian government is hoping a new technology initiative will catalyze master planning efforts in 7,935 cities and towns across the country.
Facing a surge of nearly 1 billion urban residents by 2050, the Indian government is hoping that satellite imagery and geographic information systems can provide the necessary impetus to get the estimated 75% of the country's major cities and towns that have no master plans to start preparing for a vastly different future.
"As Post Noon
reports, the government is for the first time making available
satellite imagery to the planners and development officials in these
nearly 8,000 towns and cities," writes Berg. "It's part of a National Urban Information
System that is aiming to give municipalities access to the imagery and
to help develop geographic information system databases that will be
able to inform the needs of these areas as they develop over the next
few decades."
"According to The Hindu,
satellite imagery has been used in recent master planning efforts in
the city of Khammam, about 120 miles east of Hyderabad. Government
officials are using this city's plan as a model for how other cities and
towns can use the newly available imagery to inform the future
direction of these places as they prepare to undergo massive demographic
changes," notes Berg.
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