Building Resilient Urban Communities

Increased frequency of natural hazards and sea level rise are expected to be among impacts of climate change in India. Marginalized urban settlements are often vulnerable to disaster due to their location in hazard risk areas and the use of cheap building materials, their inhabitants are therefore strongly affected by climate change. Amidst strives to meet climate targets, the poor’s needs are mostly overlooked. So, building urban resilience becomes a means of climate change adaptation. Members of BReUCom’s consortium are running the CBHE project “Building Inclusive Urban Communities” (BInUCom). BInUCom results show that traditional spatial planning approaches in urban areas do not meet requirements of rapidly transforming cities in India under climate change. There is a need for paradigmatic shift in the education of urban professionals. BReUCom uses mechanisms for postgraduate Professional Development Programs (PDPs) in India. Conceiving & piloting short term PDPs targeted at real world problems engages students from the grassroots, unable to spend time & financial resources for full Masters Programs, but important in urban transformations. BReUCom aims to foster collaboration between Indian HEIs in Ahmedabad (CEPT), XXX (XX), Mumbai (KRVIA) & Vijayawada (SPAV). Coordinated by Univeritaet fuer Weiterbildung Krems (DUK) & with the support of Universiteit Twente (UTWENTE) the project will: • Strengthen relations between HEIs & their wider social environment by arranging information, consultation and feedback • Produce Open Educational Resources by developing 5 assessment reports on urban resilience in target regions, 9 comparative case studies & 6 descriptions of new courses, following MIT’s OpenCourseWare model • Develop & pilot 6 new courses on urban resilience in existing curricula • Develop 15 new PDP modules (à 1 week) on urban resilience, pilot 9 within project duration • Offer min.3 train the trainer seminars within Indian Counsel of Architecture CoA’s framework