Urban Planning and Design for Megacities in the Global South Smart and Sustainable Development

Mohammed Firoz currently serves as an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Architecture and Planning, at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Calicut, India. He had earlier served as a visiting Faculty at the Asian Institute of Technology Bangkok, Thailand and at the School of Architecture, Architecture Association (AA) London. He is also currently holding the position of Research fellow at the Shinawatra University, Thailand. His fields of interest include research on Metropolitan and Regional planning, Sustainable design and development of cities, Creative Economy for Cities, Peri Urban studies, Environmental Management and Climate adaptation etc. He is actively associated as an adviser and consultant to several organizations besides being in several research committees, editorial boards of reputed journals etc.

Bharat Dahiya is Director of Research Center for Sustainable Development and Innovation at the School of Global Studies, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, and an Extraordinary Professor at the School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. He is a highly experienced professional in sustainable and resilient urban development, having held leadership roles in international organizations and academic institutions. Bharat has advised ministers, mayors, and governments on strategic guidance, policy development, and technical support and collaborated with prominent organizations, such as the World Bank, UN-HABITAT, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, United Nations University, and Metropolis. He has conducted high-profile applied research resulting in influential reports, including the World Bank’s Urban Environment and Infrastructure: Toward Livable Cities, the United Nations’ inaugural report on The State of Asian Cities 2010/11, and Metropolis’ Asian Metropolitan Report. Bharat completed his M.A. in Geography at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Master of Planning at School of Planning and Architecture, both based in New Delhi, India. He holds a Ph.D. in Urban Governance, Planning, and Environment from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran is a post-disciplinary social scientist with a background in architecture, urban design and planning. Her teaching and research interests’ deal with city imaginaries, decoloniality, critical social and digital media, spatial representation and practice, identity negotiations, cultural encounters in cities particularly in the Global South. She is  currently an  Associate Professor in Environmental and Spatial Equity and Co-Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London , UK. She is also the Co-chair for the UCL's Environment Research domain, Academic co-chair for the UCL Advisory Group on Climate Change and Health and UCL’s Climate Crisis Executive Committee member.

Lalit Kumar Dashora is an Urban Risk and Resilience Specialist, currently based at the School of Global Studies, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. Prior to joining SGS at TU, he worked with Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Bangkok, Thailand, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He holds a Master’s degree in Geo-Information Science for Earth Observation, Environmental Modelling & Management from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (formerly known as ITC), University of Twente, The Netherlands, and in Urban & Regional Planning from the School of Planning, CEPT University, India. His research interests focus on risk-informed, climate-compatible urban planning and development in developing countries, Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and other climate-fragile regions in Asia and the Pacific.  He is also Adviser for the Warning Research Center (WRC) of University College of London (UCL). 

Uday Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, Bhatter College, Dantan, affiliated with Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India. He earned his Doctoral Degree in Applied Geography from Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha. His research interests encompass Urban Planning, Social and Human Geography, Applied Geomorphology, Indigenous knowledge and Hazards and Disasters, Risk Assessment and Resilience, Community Response and Environmental Issues. Dr. Chatterjee has been actively involved in editing scholarly works, including the Special Issue on Urbanism, Smart Cities, and Modelling for GeoJournal, Springer, Special issue in Global Social Welfare, Springer and Frontiers journal, Editorial Board Member of Scientific Report (Nature Portfolio) and serving as a Book Series Editor for Developments in Environmental Science, Elsevier. His extensive research and editorial contributions highlight his commitment to advancing geographical knowledge and its applications.