Vision

India’s urbanisation is the largest rural-to-urban transition in human history. By the middle of the century, at least 800 million Indians will live in cities and they will constitute more than half of India’s population. India’s future, thus, hinges on handling this transition with insight and knowledge, and laying the foundation of a USD 10 trillion economy, and managing the ensuing economic, social, and ecological challenges. This transition is not just demographic, but fundamentally about transforming India’s economy, society, culture, natural and built environments, as well as politics.

Two core challenges stand in the way of this urban transformation. These are the need for:

• A new generation of interdisciplinary urban practitioners, innovators, and scholars who have the right knowledge, skills, and perspectives to tackle the ‘wicked problems’ of 21st-century urbanisation; and
• New knowledge that they can use to find solutions to these seemingly intractable challenges; and adapt, scale, and replicate them across a nation of over 1.5 billion people and other parts of the world.

Beyond the numbers lie the realities of a massive expansion in city building; rising demands for urban renewal, infrastructure, and real estate development; deep challenges of poverty, inequality, and exclusion; and the need to build governance capacity at all levels to manage this transition. India’s national development hinges on urbanisation being handled with wisdom. Sustainable urbanisation is India’s 21st-century opportunity.

The IIHS (Institution Deemed to be) University is premised on this need to transform the current nature of urban education as one of the most important drivers for India’s national development and sustainable global futures. It addresses this transition by:

• Undertaking interdisciplinary teaching and applied research to help build new national and global knowledge; and
• Training a new generation of urban practitioners through the delivery of a set of transformative interdisciplinary academic programmes.