“TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE CITY" - A Panel discussion on UD at the CONSTRO '14

Pune is known internationally as a commercial, educational,industrial and IT hub and the seventh largest metropolitan city in India. The sudden growth has attracted huge floating population, which puts tremendous pressure on its limited resources and insufficient infrastructure, resulting into haphazard development and chaos across the city. Inadequate resources and poor planning affects everyone especially children, women, elderly and people with disabilities thus affecting overall quality of life. Universal Design approach in future planning and development of the city can help to considerably address this growing crisis and problems of social exclusion.

Taking opportunity of the visit by UD experts to Pune, BNCA's UD cell conducted a panel discussion on Universal design in a city titled, “TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE CITY.....DREAMS & REALITY” in joint collaboration with Pune Construction Engineering Research Foundation (PCERF)  at the country's largest exhibition on Construction Industry - CONSTRO 2014, on Saturday,15th February, at the Agricultural grounds, Pune. 

Apart from the UD experts, local stakeholders (NGO's & Govt.) were also invited for the panel discussion. The panel discussion was co-ordinated and moderated by Prof. Kavita Murugkar.

The experts and their respective topics of presentation were as follows -

Dr Abir Mullick - Inclusive Community

Prof.Balaram  - Inclusive Transport

Dr Rachana Khare - Inclusive Education

Dr Hemanti Banerjee - Inclusive Railway stations

Dr Gaurav Raheja - Inclusive Public spaces

Prof.Gaurab Kar - Inclusive Work

Prof.Sandeep Sankat - Inclusive Urban Housing

Ar.Radhika Vaidya - Inclusive Public buildings

Ms.Anita Iyer - Public Awareness and Sensitization