The traditional architecture of Himachal Pradesh, particularly the unique Kaath Kunni houses, stands as a testament to the indigenous construction techniques deeply embedded in the cultural heritage of the region. However, amidst rapid urbanization and modernization, these architectural marvels face the threat of extinction, posing a significant challenge to the preservation of the state's cultural heritage. This research paper delves into the intricate architectural features of Kaath Kunni houses while examining the factors contributing to their decline. Drawing upon a combination of field surveys, archival research, and interviews with local artisans and residents, this study aims to document the rich heritage associated with Kaath Kunni houses and shed light on the underlying causes behind their dwindling presence. It explores the socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors influencing the abandonment of traditional building techniques in favor of modern construction practices. Furthermore, the paper evaluates existing conservation efforts and proposes strategies for the sustainable preservation of Kaath Kunni houses, emphasizing the importance of community involvement and governmental support in safeguarding this invaluable heritage. By highlighting the significance of indigenous architecture in Himachal Pradesh, this research contributes to the broader discourse on heritage conservation and sustainable development in rapidly evolving societies.

This research paper's main objective is to present the current status of the residential Built settlement in the rural areas of the Chettinad region in Tamil Nadu, a state rich in heritage, religious, and cultural aspects in India. The research paper also correlates the traces of human life (sociocultural and economic) and communities' perception of built heritage in Rural areas. For this purpose, studies have been conducted on two of its villages which have been recommended as heritage villages by the state government in UNESCO's tentative list. In this study, a mixed study approach is followed using both a visual survey and questionnaire survey as the study tools. The main objectives of this study were to determine the public reaction toward the conceptual framework to be designed for an ideal sustainable heritage-based village. Secondly, through the empirical and quantitative data analysis to capture the hurdles and identify the gaps that affect the resident's understanding and their perception of developing their villages. The paper also uses GIS as a software tool for a better understanding and cataloging of the built heritage in a holistic manner.

This study examines the perception of the community after declaring the village as “Heritage Village” designation in 2008. Despite the initiative taken by the government, the residents are reluctant to abide by the guidelines. It investigates the residents’ outlook towards the restriction imposed by the state government over the development and alterations of the Agraharams having phenomenal heritage characteristics. The research paper aims to highlight the gaps in the demands and expectations of the residents of this village. Also, possible solutions and recommendations are suggested in the paper that should be incorporated while developing any policy framework. The methodology adopted is a mixed-use approach, which helped to document the status quo of the village. The analysis was done in three stages, a visual survey, along with GIS cataloging of the Heritage residences with a questionnaire survey of the residents. During the survey, it was observed that the Heritage village designation impacted Kalpathy Village, where the residents expressed disagreement and resentment towards restrictions imposed on the village. The analysis revealed the lack of integration between the policy framework, administrative approach, and the community towards preserving the heritage residences.

It is well established that urban transport plays an important role in making cities livable and sustainable. Further, fast growth in urbanization and industrialization demands the use of more vehicles which leads to an imbalance between infrastructure availability and mobility demand. Historically, planners and decision-makers have proposed and practiced divergent approaches and policies for dealing with congestion. However, it is realized that traditionally it has been easier to advocate the novel approaches in the planning of new cities and also in cities that follow stricter regulations and are less dense. Nonetheless, it is experienced that much of the urbanization is happening in the existing cities, and in most of the developing countries the existing cities are characterized by narrow roads that are incapable of accommodating the growing traffic and have inadequate provision for parking, loading, and unloading facilities. This is further aggravated by the changing land use of the existing and mainly the old city areas. Eventually, this results in delays, deteriorating health of the city inhabitants, and fatalities due to road accidents. This harrowing experience severely undoes the benefits arising from the agglomeration effect of the urban economy. The situation is worse in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Lima, Bogota, and many capital cities across the developing world. In developing countries, multimodal traffic further worsens the situation. Many cities have implemented diverse strategies like introducing bus rapid transit systems, metro rail lines, constructing ring roads, and flyovers, but, still have failed to combat the growing menace of traffic congestion. New Delhi the capital city of India despite having one of the highest density of roads in the world and having a state-of-the-art metro transport network has failed to tackle daily congestion problems. With this background, the present paper attempts to identify the major issues and challenges on a typical arterial road that leads to congestion. The paper is based on a case study approach and attempts to identify and address the congestion issues on a 2.1 km stretch of Guru Ravidas Marg in New Delhi. There are multitudes of indicators and measurements available to analyze congestion levels. The authors adopted the common techniques of the traffic volume and level of service to establish the congestion level. Apart from this, the authors analyzed various other physical attributes like land use, street characteristics, and parking trends to comprehend the issues and challenges.

The smart city concept is primarily grounded on the use of technology to provide robust solutions to the complex urban problems and endorse sustainable development practices to enhance the citizen’s quality of life. The use of technology for citizen participation is indispensable for effective city planning, especially at the local level. The study attempts to identify notions regarding a technological approach to city planning in the form of variables through literature and eventually categorize them as catalysts and hurdles for the eloquent participatory city planning. The study is based on a primary survey with city planning experts. The adaptability of the identified variables is assessed through the perception of the experts, weighed on the five-point Likert scale. The findings intend to facilitate policy makers and practitioners in highlighting the use of technology in a city planning framework.

Delhi is the capital city of India and among the largest urban agglomeration in the world. Due to rapid urbanization, the city possesses serious urban complications and challenges in managing urban growth and augmentation of city infrastructure which severely influences the quality of life. The quality of life in Delhi depends on its urban strategies and implementation towards the level of availability, accessibility and quality of built infrastructure. Quality of life is a complicated network of diversity and dynamism of multiple components. Hence it becomes imperative to study the assessment of quality of life indicator in the built environment as a tool for understanding and addressing the city level challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine the various worldwide indicators used for assessing quality of life in built environment and to understand its various dimension as well as attributes (NIUA 2018). The paper develops comparative matrix of quality of life indicators of various organization and highlights indicators which are directly linked to the built environment. Further, this review paper investigates urban planning trends and strategies that altered and enhanced the quality of life in the built environment of Delhi. The investigation is done by exploring all three Master Plans of Delhi 1962, 2001, 2021. The study focused on macro-level issues in Delhi. Furthermore, the mapping of quality of life indicators has been done in the form of compiled matrix which comprehensively evaluates the adopted planning strategies in Delhi. The paper also suggests various planning strategies for sustainable development in Delhi. Finally, the paper calls for a need of regressive and robust strategies which are required to boost social, psychological and economic quality of life indicators in Delhi. The findings of the paper are directly applicable to planning strategies to improve the quality of life in the built environment of Delhi.

The research paper aims to focus on the issues and challenges in developing a sustainable model of an ideal heritage village project by using descriptive and empirical investigation methods.To capture the perception and understanding of the concept of sustainability of a Heritage Village, a mixed-methods approach was conducted by the researcher where document where reviewed, observations were done, structured interviews and a questionnaire survey was conducted involving resident's in the heritage villages of Pragpur and Garli in Himachal Pradesh, India.Through this research, the objective was to catalogues the resident's outlook and understand their belongingness towards their rural settlement.The analysis conducted, was also to understand their attachment to the heritage fabric which would act as a catalyst for their sustainable development.Due to the diversification in terms of architecture, social and cultural aspects, it was important to analyze the resident's perception towards the built heritage as it may vary to be more or less important to different people, community groups, or generations.

This research paper’s main objective is to present the current status of some old vernacular residential buildings in the rural areas of Himachal Pradesh a state rich in heritage, religious and cultural aspects in India. The research paper also correlates to the traces of the human life (socio-cultural and economic) and communities’ perception towards built heritage in Rural areas. For this purpose, the studies have been conducted on two of its villages which have been given as the heritage village status by the state government. The paper uses GIS as a software tool for a better understanding and valorization of the cultural heritage in an holistic manner.

Green retrofitting of existing building stocks is inevitable as governments across the world are striving to formulate and implement relevant policy measures to achieve the sustainability goals. Green retrofitting or simply greening existing buildings is a very novel concept to reduce the impact of the existing building stock on the ecosystem through energy retrofits and technologies that in turn improve and enhance the overall energy efficiency of buildings, therefore reducing its carbon footprint. In this paper, various policies and processes of green retrofitting systems are investigated. The paper relies on qualitative techniques to capture the perception of different stakeholders to gain better understanding on the barriers and deterrents to greening existing building stocks. A framework of six indicators is derived based on the existing case studies to analyse the different components of Green retrofitting process. The subject of green retrofit and its practice is an under-researched area, mainly in Indian context. The paper attempts to bridge this gap, and the strength of the paper lies in the empirical nature of its investigation.

this article provides an overview of the relationship between built environment and crime against women. The use of internet and integrated intelligent grid systems is also used to facilitate all the services under the built environment are; CCTV camera, sensors, lights, alarms, locks and other database related facilities could be managed using computers and grids. The methodology adopted for this article is to review the previous papers having key words (built environment and crime in the tittle and abstract) and to identify the attributes and gap existed in the literature. This paper provides an insight to the following topics: built environment, urban area, crime, crime prevention, built environment and crime, crime prevention through environmental design, and many other terms has been discussed. The finding of the article concludes that there is a big gap in the studies related to build environment and crime against women in India. The authors proposed a future scope of the study in terms of analyzing the impact of built environment design on crime against women in NCT Delhi.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the impact of the built environment on crimes related to women in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi through a pilot study with minimum responses.The objective of the study was to examine the built environment attributes affecting the crimes related to women in NCT of Delhi and to compare the very high crime rate areas vs very low crime rate areas as per the Delhi Police crime statistics to know the basic root cause of the incidence of crimes.The methodology adopted for the study is a structured questionnaire survey and statistical data analysis.The SPSS 23 statistical package is used for this study.A total of four wards (neighbour-hoods) were selected for the present study comprising two wards from very high crime and two wards from very low crime rate districts of Delhi and a total of 80 responses were collected for this pilot study.The findings of the study also validate the perception of the residents which confirm that the lack of desirable built environment facilities lead to high crime rate in the selected wards i.e.IP Extension and MayurVihar-II, whereas the availability of adequate desirable built environment facilities precedent of low rate of crime committed against women in the selected wards i.e.Pitam Pura and Shalimar Bagh.The future scope of the study is to undertake a comprehensive study of all the attributes of built environment impacting the crime rates against women in NCT of Delhi on the basis of structured questionnaire survey (the same questionnaire has been used for the pilot survey for 80 numbers of respondents) with a sample size of 450-500 to reduce the chances of error and to generalize the findings of the study.

Purpose - Spurred by the internationalization trend, many architectural professional bodies across the globe relaxed their norms related to the acceptance of promotion and marketing within the services. However, in India, the architectural services codes have not reflected any changes. This paper aims to focus on Indian architectural practice and attempts to investigate about the causes of low marketing activities within the practice in the country. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on a primary research process of data collection through survey administration. Survey is conducted using a close-ended structured questionnaire based on Likert scale technique. The data are analysed using both descriptive and empirical research techniques mainly, factor analysis. The sample is defined using random clustering sampling technique, from the list of architects registered with the professional regulating body of India, i.e. the Council of Architecture. Findings - The findings of the study are suggestive that architectural firms in India are instinctively practising marketing-related activities, to position their firm to attract clients without formally adopting them. There appears to be a silent routinization of the marketing tasks in the firms. The findings are suggestive of academic and professional ignorance as one of the barriers towards marketing. The findings advocate that recognizing the growing competitive nature of architectural practices in the country, the regulatory and institutional body, Council of Architecture, may retrospect their code of conduct. The results of the present study have a great implication on the architectural education in the country. The findings advocate that the architectural curriculum in the country should be broadened to include the basic knowledge about marketing. Research limitations/implications - The present study opens a newer paradigm in the practice of architectural services. It highlights the growing linkages between the field of marketing and architecture. It opens a new area of research where linkages between interdisciplinary fields is an important aspect that needs researchers attention, to have a good model of survival for professional firms in a highly competitive environment. Practical implications - The research findings have great implications for the architectural firms that seek to operate in the globally volatile environment. The increasing competitive nature of the architectural services in India demands a dynamic decision and procurement methods that can strategically position firms in the market. Marketing strategies have a significant role in positioning firms and increasing their client base. Originality/value - The subject of architectural practice and its operation is an under-researched area. The present study makes a strong point for formal involvement of marketing strategies in the promotion of architectural firms in India. The paper attempts to bridge this gap, and the strength of the paper lies in the empirical nature of its investigation.