Twenty-nine years ago, when School of Planning, Ahmedabad was established, it heralded a new philosophy of planning education and attempted to make a departure from prevailing trends in planning education and mainstream planning practice. The emphasis on broader development issues and focus on the economic and social dimensions of development at the School of Planning was aimed to foster a new mode of planning, which sought to break away from the realms of land-use plan preparation by public agencies to encompass larger societal concerns ofgrowth, distribution and management of change as well as policy formulation at the national and the state level.

      The pedagogy of planning professed at the School was also designed to be contextual. This required questioning the established western theories and ideologies and evolving meaningful perspectives on planning based on Indian realities. It also necessitated continuous revisions, adaptations and evolution of the academic programme to respond to the societal and professional requirements.

      It has been a long path we have covered since then to reach a place where we are today. It would be wrong to question whether the last twenty-nine years have been an achievement or a failure because evaluating the results of the foregone years may well give rise to an ambivalent mix of emotions. So, it would be better to see things as evolving, the way they are developing.

      We take pride in saying that our unique multi-disciplinary approach towards planning education along with our enduring values and ideologies has given us an identity, a status as a distanced school of thoughts which over the years became a role model for several other schools. But things do not end here. Planning is a profession where we will have to constantly mould ourselves according to the changing needs of time.

      As a nation we are in a phase of transition, moving ahead towards a new phase in history. Augmented demand and need among the exponentially increasing world population, greater ecological risks and environmental concerns, imponderable development in the field of science and technology have confronted us with newer challenges and set higher goals for us to achieve.

      At such a juncture we are celebrating our 29th year - the Silver Jubilee of the school. Looking back we find that we have come a long way. But we realize that we have a long way to go too, to take up new challenges, to explore the future, to know the unknown and to achieve the unachievable, to surge forward in The Road....... Ahead.

      While the completion of 29 years of the School, by itself is a cause for celebration, it is also an appropriate occasion to reflect on the future roles and directions that need to be pursued at the School. This requires collective thinking, not only at the level of the School - its faculty, students and others at the campus, but also a larger level debate, discussion and interaction that involves national and international experts. We aim to initiate this process with a Planning students meet to provide a common platform for a constructive, intellectual exchange of percepts, theories and solution in the field of planning.

For further details, contact

NOSPLAN Secretary
Council of Planning Students
School of Planning,
Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology ( CEPT )
Kasturbhai Lalbhai campus, University Road,
Navrangpura, Ahmedabad- 380009.

email : nosplan@spcept.org