Dear readers,

Our cities are broken, socially fractured and ecologically depleted. Every season brings us this stark message – people are forced to risk lives and livelihoods in the monsoon, wrestle with the toxic winter air, and struggle to keep cool in extreme summer heat. Housing remains the most pressing challenge as millions of the marginalised are forced to live in dilapidated tenements or informal and uninhabitable settlements. The ‘build more’ and ‘build at any cost’ mindset is wreaking havoc, tearing old neighbourhoods and communities apart, and destroying natural areas. Surviving the city seems like an adventure sport. 

So, what should our built environment be, what gaps exist in urban planning and design, how can cities balance growth with ecological sustainability are some of the questions that prompted us to issue a Call for Papers. We were overwhelmed with the response from veteran researchers, experts and students across the country, and our jury felt heartened by their ideas and approaches. It has taken us a few weeks to streamline the final submissions. We open the theme with a set of essays and think pieces in this edition of Question of Cities with the all-important aspect of planning. We believe that better cities can be built; it must start with planning.

The lead essay by PK Das, architect, activist and QoC Founder, sets the tone by arguing that the abysmal living conditions for millions in cities are not accidental but the intended outcome of planning that’s increasingly skewed towards exclusive city-making and profiteering. The prevailing approach to planning has manufactured social and ecological crises—and continues them. The way forward is to initiate planning by recognising and integrating all the existing realities of people, places, geography of the land, natural areas; make planning an open and participatory exercise; and ensure land use equity, he writes. Read it here.

Modern architecture has become mesmerised by the skyline and silhouette, and forgotten the human scale, the intimate two metres at which people experience the building, writes architecture student Jalaja Amonkar. Bandra Kurla Complex, among similar areas, shows the now default typology of blank podium towers, buildings with unbroken walls or reflective glass facades at street level, disjointed public spaces, and absence of street life. Mumbai knew how to build as a civic act, for people. If it studies Kala Ghoda – before it was curated for exclusivity – Ballard Estate and Shivaji Park, if it can learn from Tokyo, Singapore and European cities, there is no reason it cannot build better. Read it here.

The narrow streets, winding lanes, intimate localities were once the social spaces at the threshold of the public and the private life, elucidates noted sociologist Dr Indra Munshi. The aangan (courtyard) and kotha (terrace), for instance, were intimate open spaces with family or group associations and social relevance; many have been immortalised in songs and sayings. The mohalla (neighbourhood) wielded invisible control over young women by older women and men but was also an extended kin group. As spaces in our cities become homogenous, flattened, devoid of social meaning or significance, focused on productive capacity, planners and architects must recognise and reflect these threshold social spaces in their designs, she suggests. Read it here.

The multi-storeyed rehabilitation towers for slum dwellers, by their design, are nothing less than the intensification of the very conditions in slums they seek to mitigate and turn restrictive in that residents can be watched all the time by others, architect and environmental researcher Mst Majmumas Salehin. Mumbai’s  rehabilitation towers typically have no stoop, no courtyard, no aangan or open spaces; the long corridor is not a space of sociality but simply a means of circulation. Their built environment, she argues, is “architectural violence.” The liberation from these Panopticon-like towers lies in choices that architects make, the spatial knowledge and architectural designs that respond to people’s needs. Read it here.

The way cities are planned and built reveals a disconnect and inequity in how they treat the marginalised, the informal workers, women and children, many of whom bear the brunt of the extreme weather conditions. In this multi-header interview, Team QoC speaks to three people to search for alternatives. Dr Nandita Shah, co-founder of Akshara Centre tells us how gender concerns can reflect better in urban planning; Urban practitioner Aravind Unni details why it is imperative that planning includes informal livelihoods and informal settlements. Natasha Sharma, co-founder and festival director of Govandi Arts Festival in Mumbai, pushes for the need to include children and spaces for them in urban plans. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read about Mumbai rains and the havoc it caused; the landslide at tunnel project site in Wayanad, Kerala, puts the focus on lax infrastructural guidelines; How the missing altostratus clouds are causing chaotic Indian monsoon; Sydney experiences its hottest June since records began; and how America celebrated its 250th birthday through heat and storm.

If you find our work important and engaging, give us a shout on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you have something to say to us, write to [email protected]. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Question of Cities, India’s only journal on cities-nature-people, do so here.

Thank you,
Smruti
July 10, 2026