What do we mean by water-centric urban planning and governance? Urban water security challenges are no longer merely about access to water, but also coping with floods, water quality and other climate change induced risks. For some time, there has been a recognition that statutory urban planning needs to be re-imagined and that existing town and country planning (T&CP) laws and practices need to be reconsidered to address some of these complex challenges. The latter imperative has been further bolstered by NITI Aayog, which recommended forming an apex committee at the state level to undertake review of the existing T&CP laws and other relevant urban development legislation. In continuation, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and its recent High-Level Committee (HLC) on Urban Planning have acknowledged that the current laws are inadequate, and there is a need for reconsidering the urban planning laws, frameworks, and practices to address contemporary needs and emerging risks.
As a first step to addressing this, in this blog, we have attempted to locate the statutory urban planning instrument, the Master Plan, in the broader legal and institutional ecosystem of water governance. Given the attention Delhi’s water has received this summer, and with the flooding season upon us, we take up the case of Delhi Master Plan. In the diagram, we have mapped the relevant legal and institutional ecosystem of the Master Plan to get a sense of the complexity involved in pursuing water-centric urban planning in Delhi. The schematic diagram above reveals the multiple interactions and interlinkages of the Delhi Master Plan with other laws and institutions.
CPR Insights: Locating Water-centric Urban Planning and Governance