Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS)

As Bhutan navigates rising motorisation and expanding road networks, there is a growing need to strengthen road safety systems. This involves equipping officials to assess, design, and implement safer and more resilient, inclusive mobility solutions through Road Safety Audit (RSA) principles.

The IIHS Capacity Development team recently concluded a 7-day programme in Bengaluru (3-9 May 2026) on ‘Road Safety Audit'. This marked the fourth capacity development programme conducted for the Royal Government of Bhutan.

At IIHS, the Capacity Development team designs tailored learning programmes rooted in real-world practice, partnering with governments, practitioners and experts across geographies.

Have an idea for an innovative project, training, or action-research collaboration on urban transport and mobility? Write to: [email protected] or Call: +91 96119 11169.

Along the ARC is a new conversation series that carries forward the spirit of IIHS Urban ARC.

Extending the conversations of IIHS Urban ARC 2026: Contested Terrains, the series creates a year-long space for early-career researchers, practitioners, and scholars to share work-in-progress, reflect on methods, and stay with evolving questions of the urban.

Across six panels, Along the ARC will bring together conversations on urban and applied research, exploring how space, place, and scale are shaped by governance, infrastructure, environment, labour, migration, technology, and social difference.

An invitation to continue thinking, questioning, and imagining together — beyond the annual conference.

More details on Panel 1, scheduled for 27 May, will follow soon.

As India strives to meet its ambitious target of 500GW of non-fossil energy capacity by 2030 – and achieve net-zero by 2070 – it requires an estimated total mitigation investment of 22.7 trillion USD. By assuming a position of ‘strategic subordination’, India is leveraging the global credit hierarchy: retaining control on critical infrastructure, but relying on dollar-dominated international finance to scale up.

A new working paper by Stuti Haldar and Amir Bazaz applies the Global Credit View (GCV) framework to assert that India's approach constitutes a form of subordinate financialization: the State actively creates conditions for transnational capital to enter the energy sector, converting domestic infrastructure into assets legible to offshore credit markets. This enables scale and speed, while preserving meaningful State-led direction over the transition.

The result is a critical balancing act, between the pursuit of strategic autonomy and the realities of operating within a dollar-centred global credit hierarchy, subject to global financial cycles and currency volatility.

The paper, ‘Bargaining with the 'Empire': Strategic Subordination and Dollar Dependence in India's Energy Transition’ is published in CIRCLE — Papers in Innovation Studies.

Read the full piece: https://journals.lub.lu.se/piis/article/view/29174/25103

City Scripts is delighted to invite you to a conversation on 'The Good Reporter' and its Hindi edition, 'Badi Aayi Patrakar', a collective biography of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only digital rural news network, and the country’s first hyperlocal digital news channel run entirely by women.

The session will explore what it means to write about journalism itself, foregrounding the people behind each story reported. Opening onto larger questions around practicing journalism in the Global South, the conversation will reflect on the frames of knowledge and accountability that emerge when rural Dalit women journalists write about the societies they live in, and in doing so, reshape dominant narratives.

This session will be in English and Hindi.

Register for the event, here: https://cityscripts.iihs.co.in/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=kl_cityscripts&utm_content=thegoodreporter

IIHS and NICMAR University are inviting submissions for Track 12: High Performance Building (HPB) Design and Operation, at ICCRIP 2026 — India's longest-running construction and infrastructure research conference.

Submissions are now open for research papers, full papers, case studies, practitioners' perspectives, and doctoral colloquium abstracts.

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2026
Conference Dates: 21–22 August 2026

To know more, visit: https://www.nicmar.ac.in/iccrip2026/guidelines

Every building India constructs in the next 25 years locks in decades of energy consumption and carbon. The choices we make now matter.

High-performance design isn't theoretical—it's how we build cities that work. Through ASSURE, IIHS provides technical assistance and capacity development to help building sector stakeholders adopt these approaches at no cost.

Learn more at http://factor4assure.iihs.co.in/ or contact Rakhi Sahay at [email protected].

What if urban ‘chaos’ is actually a system - just not the one planners intended?
Indivar Jonnalagadda’s fieldwork journey began in Hyderabad’s bastis and ended up inside the bureaucratic machinery of the city.

What he found: irregularity isn’t the exception in Indian cities, it’s the rule. Regularization, not regulation, is what holds things together. And the network of actors who make this work, from brokers-to-brokers to mid-level bureaucrats, shapes everything from water connections to metro lines.

Join Indivar as he shares insights from his fieldwork at the upcoming edition of Publics@IIHS. The conversation will be moderated by Neha Sami, Associate Dean - IIHS School of Environment & Sustainability.

📅 14 May 2026
🕒 6:00 PM IST
📍Online on Zoom

Register via: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2717779580711/WN_mITEyzDxROmRTgtb6ywOjQ

This May, IIHS Screens returns with the documentary, Kadubai. Directed by Omeya Anand, the film follows Kadubai, a Dalit woman artist navigating the fragile line between survival and meaning. While her songs, inspired by B. R. Ambedkar, resonate across digital platforms, her everyday life remains shaped by poverty, displacement, and uncertainty. Living in a settlement under constant threat of eviction, Kadubai continues to sing, organise, and resist.

Join the post-screening discussion between Omeya Anand, the Director, and Nirupama S, Lead, IIHS Media Lab, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

22 May 2026 | 6:00 PM IST
IIHS, Sadashivanagar, Bengaluru
To register for the event, visit the link: https://urbanlens.iihs.co.in/

New in Urbanisation: Experimenting in Cities: A Deleuzian Approach to Urban Living Labs for Transformative Adaptation, by by Alejandro Barcena, Joanne Douwes, Anshuman Karol, Hayley Leck, Shruti Priya, Rabi Raj, Nina Schoonman & Catherine Sutherland.

Read more: https://urbanisationjournal.com/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=urbanisation_online -nformal

Join ASSURE’s upcoming Online Workshop on 'Daylighting Simulation and HPB Design', and learn how to apply simulation insights to design high-performing, human-centred spaces.

🗓️ 22 May 2026
🕒 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM IST
📍 Zoom

This practice-oriented workshop will teach how you to interpret simulation outputs and use them to shape design decisions at the concept stage itself. Suitable for architects, engineers, educators, and real estate professionals.

Register here: https://factor4assure.iihs.co.in/training/designing-hpbs-for-net-zero/upcoming-webinars/?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=factor4assure_training

ASSURE recently hosted an engaging online workshop on ‘Envelope Load Simulation and HPB Design’, bringing together practitioners and learners interested in advancing High Performance Building design.
The workshop focused on strengthening both conceptual understanding and practical application of building envelope performance — an important aspect of designing buildings that are energy-efficient and comfortable to occupy.
In this interactive, exercise-led session, participants explored how facade design and material choices influence overall building performance.

Missed this one?
The next online workshop on Daylighting Simulations and HPB Design will be hosted on 22 May 2026.

To know more and register, click here: https://factor4assure.iihs.co.in/training/designing-hpbs-for-net-zero/upcoming-webinars/