Town planning

A new website: Auroville Urban Planning and Development Repository has been created. This initiative, led by a group of Auroville residents, brings together hundreds of documents related to the planning and development of Auroville.

In response to a Right to Information request of 7 December, 2024 the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education has sent the applicant on 3 January the minutes of the 67th Governing Board meeting held in Auroville on 31 May, 2024.

Prashant Hedao was the Regional Planning Coordinator of L’Avenir d’Auroville, Auroville’s Town Planning Department, from 2007-2010. In those years he worked closely together with then Governing Board member Dr BV Doshi on the Auroville Master Plan.

In early December, six graduate students and their professor from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Queen’s University, Canada, visited Auroville to explore the social impact of Auroville on the nearby village of Kuilaypalayam.

Issued by two members of the International Advisory Council and supported by eight International personalities

In August last year, Omar, Mona and David made a presentation to the community about the next steps they envisaged after the Dreamweaving on the Crown experiment [see AV Today no.

One thing is evident at present: there is a complete breakdown in communication between those who favour the present developments and those who, for various reasons and to varying degrees, oppose it.

In the October 2023 issue of Auroville Today [#411] we highlighted the 901-page framework study ‘Governance in Auroville’ of Professor Raag Yadava and his associate Nidhi Harihar.

Induja, a young Auroville architect, talks about how she came to Auroville, the work which inspires her and her hopes for the future.

As my partner and I were talking about the history of Auroville’s on-going crisis, she encouraged me to read a specific book chronicling the early days of Auroville.

Cristo was the Coordinator of the Auroville Universal Township Integrated Master Plan 1999, the first Auroville Master Plan, which was approved by the community.

In 1959, the physicist and novelist C.P. Snow gave a famous lecture in Cambridge in which he distinguished two cultures: the scientific and the intellectual literary cultures.

Over the years, Auroville has received much support from outside.

For six days in early January there was a collaborative planning workshop or charrette involving over 60 Aurovilians and visiting experts. The stated aim of Auroville - A Way Forward was to “bring the purpose of Auroville into our life, built environment and organization’.

In the November issue of Auroville Today, a group of Aurovilian architects and town planners discussed the Galaxy plan and concluded that it still had much to offer.

Luis Feduchi is a Spanish architect and town planner. He was Professor of Urban Design at the Berlin Technical University, Germany before moving back to Spain to work as Dean of Architecture of the University of Madrid.

In September 2009, the first meeting for “Landscaped Spaces” took place in Auroville. It followed a proposal by Mr. Doshi, the Chairperson of Auroville’s Town Development Council, to create interesting public spaces at various Auroville locations for people to gather and socialize.

Gilles came to Auroville in 1980. He is a civil engineer who specialized in Town Planning. For the last three years he coordinated the work of the Auroville Resource Center (ARC) which was set up to provide a holistic, integrated approach to the future development of Auroville.