The book is an effort to evolve and present a humane approach for planning practices in India.

The planning approach followed in India, mostly ignores the cultural peculiarities, habits, preferences of Indian users. This is mainly because, all the city planning… preparation of development plans is based on the planning norms formulated in Europe or North America. Due to socio-economic, demographic and cultural differences in Indian context, the Indian users and their preferences are very much different. It may be useful to incorporate culture-specific user aspects and evolve a humane approach to city planning in India. The consideration of user preferences will not only reduce conflicting situations in urban areas due to non-congruence between planning principles adopted and principles of urbanism rooted in the place, but will also be congenial to developing appropriate social environments.

Hence in the book, a study about Indian built environments and its users is presented. It brought out the peculiarities of Indian users, their preferences and Indian principles of urbanism. The study establishes the fact that there are culture-specific user preferences in Indian context and further evolves a framework for humane approach to deal continuously evolving built environments in urban India.