School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi

About: School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi is a education organization based out in New Delhi, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Smart city. The organization has 278 authors who have published 347 publications receiving 1665 citations.

Built Environment Factors, Psychosocial Factors and Diabetes Mellitus: A South Indian Study

Abstract: We assessed the contribution of selected built environment factors to body weight in a pilot study in urban Visakhapatnam, South India. Participants were 123 men and 60 women (age 16 to 69 years; BMI 17.3–30.5) who had lived in the area for at least 3 years. Individuals with lower BMI tended to be (a) working people (non-home based—working away from home), (b) non-vegetarians, (c) physically active (activity mostly related to work), and (d) taking afternoon siestas. Psychological stress, quality of life and wellbeing data were used from an earlier study of individuals with diabetes mellitus. The measures included were depression, anxiety, energy, positive wellbeing, satisfaction, impact, and social worry and diabetes worry (Diabetes quality of life). Guttman’s Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) suggested the relationships among the psychosocial measures can be accounted for by one facet with three axial sets of variables (a) positive wellbeing and energy, (b) satisfaction, impact, and social worry and diabetes worry, and (c) anxiety and depression. SSAs on male participants suggested that fasting blood glucose and weight were most closely associated with anxiety and energy levels. In female participants, weight and fasting glucose were most closely associated with energy and to a somewhat lesser extent with anxiety. In both sexes, age was closely associated with positive wellbeing. Also in both sexes, age, weight, and fasting glucose levels were closely associated with each other. The results support the importance of understanding the impact of built environment and psychosocial factors on body weight in diabetic individuals for designing prevention strategies.

Walking the First/Last Mile to/from Transit: Placemaking a Key Determinant

Abstract: Sustainable mobility concerns have seen cities introducing mass transit systems, but travel choice factors such as accessibility, convenience, comfort and safety cannot be addressed through a transit system alone. A trip made on a transit system requires commuters to utilise more than one mode of transport. Walking is generally the most common transport mode to access and egress transit stops. While there is evidence on the pedestrian environment influencing transit ridership, only a few studies have explored how it affects the share of people who walk to/from transits, especially in the context of the developing world. This article postulates that the pedestrian environment influences users’ decision to walk the last mile, substantiating it with the findings of a study of transit users across the metro stations of Delhi, India. A pedestrian environment index is developed by including elements of the built form and activities adjacent to the network of streets, in addition to the pedestrian infrastructure quality. Interestingly, the route environment is found to have a significant and much higher correlation with walk share in contrast to pedestrian infrastructure availability. Within the route environment, the sub-indicator that impacts walk share the most is placemaking. It highlights the significance of planning for an enhanced pedestrian environment in a larger context of the catchment area, in contrast to the current myopic approach of station-centric pedestrian infrastructure provisioning.

Impact of infrastructure availability on level of industrial development in Jharkhand, India: a district level analysis

Abstract: This paper contributes to the ongoing research on measuring the industrial development at a micro (district) level and turning the findings into useful policy tools. The paper takes the analysis at micro level and concentrates on the districts of Jharkhand state – one of the most resource rich states in India with a low level of industrial development. For better understanding the impact, the infrastructure is split into three major components – physical infrastructure (PI), banking infrastructure (BI) and social infrastructure (SI). Results show that, when all the districts as a group is considered, for all the models, the association of the components of infrastructure with level of industrial development is found to be weak – which reflects the low level of infrastructure availability in the state, whereas when the more industrialised districts are considered, for the same set of models, only PI and SI are found to be significant, suggesting a lack of proper synchronisation of the industrial development policy for BI at the district level.

Ecological integrity and environmental protection for Vijayawada region – Scattered Eastern Ghats

Abstract: The ecological integrity is widely discussed as a new concept by several ecologists and environmentalists. A consensus in this regard is yet to be derived for its definition. Human intervention for its developmental activities results in several environmental changes that enhance some species, ecosystem and ecological processes while at the same time brings irrecoverable damage to the Planet Earth. It is essential and crucial to focus research and scientific analysis and establish awareness and education to provide a means of distinguishing responses between improvements in quality of ecosystem and those of damages. The focus of this paper is to emphasize the organized urban planning at a macro level and the architectural design interventions at the micro level in Vijayawada where eco – sensitivity exists with due consideration to ecological integrity and environmental protection. The ecological dynamics of continuity indicated that hillocks of Vijayawada region are a part of Eastern Ghats. The study is to elaborate that the landscape, eco-patches and its connectivity establishes a unique corridor to strengthen ecological system and as a green corridor to Vijayawada city to fulfill the demands of the city and also to create the ecological patch connectivity to scattered Eastern Ghats especially in the Krishna-Guntur region which connects the Nallamala hills through Kondapalli hill toward Sothern side and to the Papikondalu at the northern side of Eastern Ghats. These corridors may even support environmental conservation and provides rural edge in urban context and functions as lung spaces to ease the heat island effect of urban settlement. So the explicit development controls have been derived to guide and organize at micro level so as to achieve the macro level considerations of ecological integrity.