Balakrishnan Balachandran
Balakrishnan R. Balachandran (Bala) is an urban planner and international development consultant with over 30 years of experience. His areas of expertise and experience include planning for post-disaster recovery, resilience, and adaptation; land use planning, urban land management, and land use - transport integration; affordable housing policy; and planning for sustainable sanitation. His most recent research is on risk tradeoffs in disaster-induced relocation and the role of planning and policy in negotiating them. The research outcomes inform climate change adaptation, post-disaster recovery, and disaster mitigation policies. He is a short-term consultant and advisor for the World Bank and KfW Bankengruppe on institutional reforms and capacity building for risk-informed urban planning in Kerala under the Rebuild Kerala Initiative.
Bala has served as Director and a member of the Governing Board in several organizations, including Environmental Planning Collaborative, Ahmedabad; Alchemy Urban Systems Private Limited, a consulting firm that he co-founded in Bangalore; and CDD Society, a sustainable sanitation non-profit in Bangalore, India). As Executive Director, EPC, he led the preparation of the Development Plan and Town Planning Schemes (land readjustment) for rebuilding the city of Bhuj (Gujarat, India) after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. Bala has provided consulting services on projects in India, Mexico, Cuba, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Mauritius, and Indonesia. He has recently provided advisory services in resilience, post-disaster recovery, affordable housing policy, and sustainable urban development. He has engaged extensively with academic institutions as adjunct/ external faculty and in advisory roles for curriculum development and review.
