“Delhi Within: An Ideas Competition, Habitat Summit, 2009 The Power of Seeing: Humane Urban Design Project” won the “Delhi Within”, Ideas Competition to Reinvent, Revise, Realise Delhi’s Untapped Urban Potential, on September 26, 2009 

“Delhi Within”, an Ideas Competition organised by Champion Cities, Anagram Architects and India Habitat Centre, is part of the effort to encourage a multi-disciplinary engagement with the city and urban issues and to facilitate positive change in India’s cities undergoing rapid transformations in their built environment. It intends to showcase ideas borne out of multi-disciplinary research and creative practices that reveal and work with the forces that create define, evolve and mutate urban environments and experiences.

Habitat Summit, 2009 – Introduction

In February 2008, India Habitat Centre and Mirabilis Advisory conceived the idea to launch an Urban Habitats Forum – a professional civil society initiative whose primary purpose would be to serve as a multi-disciplinary public awareness and educational platform, and to facilitate positive change in India’s cities by engaging all stakeholders of society in shaping India’s built environment.

It has been developed with a view that sustainable urban development necessarily needs a shared vision of the future. Such a vision will lead to the creation of a manifesto of citizens’ aspirations that can guide policy and programmes. Underpinning its commitment to developing an alternative urban vision and agenda that considers liveability and sustainability as key parameters for success in the development of India’s cities, the Forum is co-hosting the first ‘Habitat Summit’ with the India Habitat Centre from September 24-26 2009.

The ‘Summit’ has been designed as a communication vehicle to position key policy issues as well as to highlight opportunities for positive change by showcasing community-oriented community urban regeneration projects The ‘Summit’ has been conceived as a replicable/exportable model which the Urban Habitats Forum intends to expand across India’s capital cities by 2012.