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Making Guwahati, India, safer through urban planning

 

As eastern India’s second-largest city, Guwahati faces numerous challenges relating to population growth, poverty, and violence. A new study from the Centre for Urban Equity at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT) shows how inclusive urban planning processes can help prevent violence and make Guwahati and other Indian cities safer.

In a series of four policy briefs, the research team demonstrates how poor governance practices, particularly in informal hill settlements around the city, are putting residents at risk. The team identifies the vulnerabilities faced by women and street vendors in particular, indicating potential solutions to make Guwahati safer for all inhabitants. These include increasing the frequency of public transport, providing basic services to areas that are illegally occupied while land tenure is clarified, bringing residents of informal settlements into planning processes, and creating a mechanism to manage public markets.

Read the Guwahati policy briefs:

Policy brief 1: Women’s safety and transport (PDF, 949KB) - Also available in Assamese (PDF, 7.9MB)

Policy brief 2: Hill settlements: Deprivations as conflict and conflicts due to deprivations (PDF, 998KB) - Also available in Assamese (PDF, 9.2MB)

Policy brief 3: Hill settlements: The land rights movement (PDF, 813KB) - Also available in Assamese (PDF, 5.3MB)

Policy brief 4: Deprivations and conflicts in street vending in Guwahati (PDF, 930KB) - Also available in Assamese (PDF, 9.1MB)

Find out more about how the Centre for Urban Equity is helping to make India’s cities safer through their project Poverty, inequality, and violence in urban India: Towards more inclusive urban planning.

Learn more about how IDRC is working to prevent urban violence through our Safe and Inclusive Cities partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development.