Vedula, Aparna C. and Chavan, Priya M. creator text Economic & Political Weekly monographic eng

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61(6), Feb 7, 2026: p.85-88 Since 1979, Maharashtra’s urban development regulation has followed a distinctly expert-driven, technocratic trajectory, with development control regulations progressively standardised and unified to apply common development parameters promoting a radically higher intensity of spatial development across urban and rural geographies. This was institutionalised in 2020 through the Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations, which centralise planning authority, undermine constitutionally mandated powers of local bodies, and impose a uniform paradigm of metropolitan built-form logics and high development intensities on small towns and rural settlements. Thereby, they marginalise need-based, incremental, and self-built forms of urbanisation and act as an instrument to compel the alignment of local development trajectories with global investment aspirations.-Reproduced https://www.epw.in/journal/review-urban-affairs/unified-urban-development-control.html Economic & Political Weekly 260427