The profiles of Ahmedabad which is seventh largest metropolis in India and the largest city of Gujarat State is to develop a background understanding of the city for the research project Poverty, Inequality and Violence in Indian Cities towards Inclusive Planning and Policies. The paper comprises of two parts. It lays out the relevant urban context like city’s demography, transformations since liberalization and their impacts for urban poverty and inequality; the historical growth of the city,  the status of housing amongst the Poverty, Inequality and Violence and the urban development  in terms of planning, housing, basic services and public transport. It is identified and discussed here that, some of the key arenas of conflicts and violence that are linked to land, planning and governance  in the city,  slum resettlement, informal urban peripheral settlements, and women’s safety and public transport. The low rate of urbanization in India 1in the last two decades, cities have not been able to provide the growing urban population with viable housing, potable water, adequate sanitation, employment at reasonable wages, access to education and healthcare, accessibility to work and other opportunities and social security. As a result, a large proportion of the urban population is constrained to live in slums or informal settlements, depend on the informal sector for their livelihood, access water supply, education and healthcare in the private informal sector and use informal transport options. Parallel to this, over the past decade or two, governments and elites have been pushing for urban development that would transform Indian cities according to their images of a world-class or global city (see, for e.g. Dupont 2011; Desai 2012a; Mahadevia 2011a). More....  

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