AHMEDABAD: The city had its first brush with the planned development when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was president of Ahmedabad Municipality in 1920s. Over the years, the city and periphery got about 130 town planning (TP) schemes even as the model’s elements were borrowed from Maharashtra.

The ministry of housing and urban affairs in July launched a pilot project on the formulation of local area planning (LAP) and town planning schemes (TPS) at the cost of Rs 50 crore covering 25 Indian cities including Chennai, New Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Indore, Faridabad, Jaipur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun and Shimla among others. 

The senior officials from the ministry, commissioners from the selected cities, town planners and urban experts participated in the first workshop for formulation of LAP and TPS at the Cept University on Saturday. 

Saswat Bandopadhyay, professor, faculty of planning and public policy, Cept University, said that Cept will play the role of national anchor institute to provide technical support to the Town and Country Planning Organisation of the Government of India and participating cities. Cept is among three national institutions that would work on the project.

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