Abstract

Over the last two decades, the concept of sustainable development has emerged as a new development paradigm, combining social, economic, environmental and Political aspects of development. These areas are often called dimensions’ or ‘pillars’ of sustainable development and have received varying degrees of attention by the Research community. The urbanization has lead to growth as well as decline of cities. In moving ahead we are leaving our past to distress. Urban Distressed Areas suffer from interlinked social, economical and environmental distress, as well as of problems of faulty urban structure and weak institutional capacity. Therefore, the challenge of reversing the decline of these areas is a large and intricate task. The specific challenge is the attempt to face urban distress implementing the combination of the regeneration strategies based on awareness about dialectic relation between the economic decline, decline of physical environment and social distress. To confront these challenges requires cross-cutting and integrated approaches and strategies that are best provided by spatial policies at the urban levels involving multi agency and stakeholder engagement and participation. Sustainable urban regeneration seeks to tackle unsustainability through an integrated programme of projects designed to reverse the cycle of decline and create a virtuous circle of improvement. Devising integrated programmes requires thinking about cities and neighbourhoods in an organic and holistic way, recognising the interrelationship and linkages between different problems and opportunities.The paper attempts to address such urban questions and provides a major contribution to the vision of a sustainable urban regeneration in India.