BENGALURU: India is on a path to rapid urbanization, but the country lacks adequate number of urban planners. According to the Unesco Global Education Monitoring report 2019 that was released on Tuesday, India requires 3 lakh urban town and country planners by 2031 to rejuvenate and develop its cities into smart ones. However, the country has only one urban planner per 4 lakh people. 

In India, 21 universities offer postgraduate town planning programmes and only five offer them at the undergraduate level. As per the 2011 census, the country had only 4,500 qualified town and country planners, stated the report. And according to the report and experts, when it comes to urban planning education, nothing much has changed. 

Prof N Sridharan, director, School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal said: “The reason why urban planning education is lagging is due to lack of awareness about availability of any such course at the school and college level. Students are mostly told about mainstream professions. Urban planning education is different from architecture studies and has a lot more social, environmental and technical exposure.” 

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