Increased frequency of natural hazards and sea level rise are expected impacts of climate change in India. Marginalised urban settlements are often vulnerable to disaster due to their location in hazardous areas and the use of non-durable building materials.Their inhabitants are therefore strongly affected by climate change. But amidst strives to meet climate targets, the poor's needs are mostly overlooked.

In this context, there is an urgent need for paradigmatic shift in the education of graduate students in spatial planning and design as well as training of urban professionals from different backgrounds in order to confront upcoming challenges related to climate change impacts on urban informal settlements.

The BReUCom project intents to conceive and pilot 20 short terms post-graduate Professional Development Programs (PDPs) targeted at real world problems. It aims to produce Open Educational Resources by developing 10 comparative case studies and 10 descriptions of new courses for graduate students in existing programs, following MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) model. It shall pilot new courses on urban resilience in existing curricula for graduate students.

The Professional Development Programs (PDPs) are designed to function as modules on urban resilience for urban professionals from different backgrounds and working experiences, pilot modules including internships with NGOs in India and Europe.

For more information: https://www.breucom.eu

Thursday 17 October 2019

BReUCom for KRVIA Masters: 2019


Quality of life is an idea that is often being discussed in various studies as a response to many issues and complexities that have recently emerged within our cities in the process of transformation. Along with that, the quality of life is also connected with the question of vulnerability and resilience. The city of Mumbai, as region at large, is vulnerable to projected climate change related disaster within given social, economic and environmental stressed conditions coupled with population growth, informal housing, and unfair land distribution & planning mechanism. In particular, the environmental issues and quality of urban living are the most recent debate that engages the planning and philosophical dimensions as methodological questions within academia. Therefore, the academic interest, directed within the urban realm are often tending towards urban development as an imagination, method as a toolkit that it employs while system as an urban component that get affected in the process.

The question of resilience and sustainability is about addressing the urban system (the question of sustainability at building level is climatology) where KRVIA Masters Studio can begin to develop the framework as a vision for comprehensive understanding of environmental / social / economic equities with help of following areas of case studies & research:

  • Assess the development plan to identify the key challenges | Planning & Urban Resilience
  • Identify the various urban systems (environment & ecology, community & livelihood, network & mobility) that are affected by key challenges | Urban Systems & Urban Resilience
  • Stimulate the communities and stake holders | Participatory Planning & Urban Resilience
  • Theoretical and contextual framework for urban resilience | Urban Theory & Urban Resilience
  • Institutional and administrative structure for urban resilience management | Policy & Urban Resilience




Each of the sub-set can be formulated as an electives & module based studio at the level of Semester III, within the tenure of BreuCom. The case studies could be supported by studio sites and findings (with due credit to KRVIA Masters) with help of extensive use GIS mapping method.

As a part of case study, it is necessary to define the nature of urban system that shall be researched upon, with methodological position, which in turn shall able to direct the studio methods and toolkit that are necessary to work around with.  With BreuCom approach to master’s studio and electives, it is expected to study and unfold the relationships among various influencing factors that articulate the urban resilience. It is also expected that BreuCom shall enable the students to carry out the thesis research work with improved and articulated areas of urban resilience, incorporating the economic development plans, public policies, improvement and guidelines for environmental protection, development of social and economic program with fresh approach to participatory planning and objective guidelines for sustainability.

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