Sustainability Initiatives successfully conducted our first International Training on ‘Urban Renewal and The Future of Cities’ in December 2018. This training was conducted for Officers / Town Planners of the Department of Town Planning and Valuation of Government of Maharashtra. 
This  two week training was  designed,  developed  and  implemented  by  senior experts at London School of Economics (Custom Programmes), who partnered with Sustainability Initiatives, Pune as a local partner. The training’s primary objective was to bring quality content and a rich teaching and public policy experience to the officers of Government of Maharashtra. The Training was hosted in Barcelona, Spain. The Training was an exciting mix of classroom interaction followed by site visits in Barcelona, Spain to actually see the Urban Transformation achieved by this city. The Training also included meetings with Barcelona’s Urban Planners and government officials involved in city’s urban projects.
24 Officers including Mr. N.R. Shende, Director, Department of Town Planning and Valuation, Government of Maharashtra, attended the training.
To ensure that the Training is effective and can be fruitful for Urban Planning in Maharashtra, the program included rigorous interactive sessions on potential Urban Renewal projects in the cities of Pune, Mumbai and Thane.  Post the training, London School of Economics will complete a follow-up round to see if concepts gathered during the training can be included as a part of the Urban Renewal projects in Maharashtra.
Sustainability Initiative’s Trustees Ar Anagha Paranjape-Purohit, Ar Poorva Keskar and Ar Vijay Sane, were part of this delegation and ensured that the training content was customized to Indian conditions / scenario so that government officers will be able to take some concrete steps at their own individual levels for urban planning in Maharashtra.