Urban Action Internship, January 2014

Prof MV Rajeev Gowda, K Jairaj, V Naresh Narsimhan, V Ravichandar and Nitin Pai interact with interns at the launch of the Urban Action Internsip

The internship was a platform for students and professionals to get involved in transforming public spaces through strategic interventions. It was an opportunity to work with the community, government agencies and civil society towards more inclusive urban development.

Interns on field work

The internship offered two streams to select from: Urban Design and Urban Governance. The former allowed interns to learn more about urbanism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and undertake field work at specific sites in the city. Those with a background in architecture, design, civil engineering, transport, geography, maps etc. applied for the Urban Design option. The latter involved exploring issues like social and economic structures in cities, sustainable development, women’s safety, participatory planning and policy making processes. Those with a background in law, economics, statistics, political science, other social sciences, environmental science, or from any discipline with an interest in the aforementioned issues, are applied for the Urban Governance option.

The internship activities involved site-based field work, interaction with experts, practitioners and government officials, studio-based research and group work, brainstorming to come up with solutions to the observed problems and implementation of proposed solutions. Students or recent graduates interested in a longer term engagement were also given the option of undertaking a research-focused internship.

Urban Action interns at a session with Vinay Sreenivas from Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore in Studio Chaape