Dear readers,

Not a day goes by when trees, in hundreds or thousands, are not being written off the landscape of India’s cities to accommodate one more project and forests erased to mine the minerals beneath. Trees are increasingly seen as obstacles in the way of ‘building’ a city and its infrastructure. How myopic and self-sabotaging a perspective this is. When governments merrily chop down trees – 3.7 lakh across India’s cities in only five-six years – they are not thinking about our future, let alone the ecology of trees. This is alarming because, QoC analysis shows, a staggering 24.5 lakh trees are going to be axed in the coming years. Nothing matters more than trees and forests as our cities turn into extreme heat hotspots. Dive into this edition of Question of Cities on trees.

QoC Editorial foregrounds the issue that as acres and acres of trees are hacked, ironically, with the permission of government and the courts, as hundreds of trees marked with numbers like prisoners in concentration camps awaiting their denouement. Research shows that the mean urban temperatures in India’s cities may rise by an additional 45 percent compared to surrounding rural areas. The correlation seems to be lost on governments that make tree-felling decisions and the courts that mostly uphold them. QoC calls for a new imagination of cities with trees and a steadfast commitment to greening cities, as Paris has done and New York has embarked on. Read it here.

The dense green forest of over 130 square kilometres in the Great Nicobar faces total erasure by a Rs 92,000-crore mega development project of a transshipment terminal, port, and airport. More than a million trees will be cut – ecologists say this is a gross under-estimate given the density there – and will affect the indigenous Shompen tribe, a largely uncontacted tribe in the forest. “We are signing off a forest much richer, more diverse, a much older and larger forest than the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai,” says Pankaj Sekhsaria, researcher and editor of The Great Nicobar Betrayal, in an interview to Team QoC. Read it here.

Between the Dwarka forest and the road outside, there was a staggering difference of 17 to 21 degrees Celsius on the thermal camera, finds multimedia journalist Ankita Dhar Karmakar. Stretches of Dwarka, a 125 acres dense forest in southwest Delhi, are being cleared for projects. The forest is being erased because it has not been tagged as a ‘forest’ in Delhi’s Master Plan, the Supreme Court decided in March, paving the way for tree-felling and construction. Already, 1,200 trees have been felled here adding to the nearly 15,000 trees chopped down in the past few years across Delhi. Read it here.

From Delhi’s Ridge and the Aravallis to Hasdeo Arand, Mumbai’s Aarey, the forests of Northeast and the Great Nicobar island, and several cities and states across, lakhs of trees have already been cut or marked for felling to accommodate highways, railways, airports, mining, tourism, and urban expansion projects. Architect-illustrator Nikeita Saraf collates a Fact Sheet, based on material from multiple sources and analysis by the QoC team, to map the scale of tree loss across India, the projects driving it, and the growing consequences for heat, flooding, air quality as well as urban life. Read it here.

From Pune to Hyderabad, citizens have been protesting the large-scale tree cutting linked to roads, metros, flyovers, mining and real estate projects despite worsening urban heat. Team QoC visits a few cities which have seen and are seeing protests against tree-cutting — in Pune, activists say decades of infrastructure-led concretisation have devastated tree cover; Hyderabad’s continuing protests around KBR Park show the citizens’ determination, and Goa’s tree cover depletion from 334 square kilometres to 258 square kilometres in just a decade has residents worrying that the once-cool state will turn warmer and ecologically fragile. Read it here.

Paris went from a grey car-centric to green and tree-filled one in barely a decade, planting nearly 1,00,000 trees, and creating 531 gardens and two urban forests with Mayor Anne Hidalgo leading the transformation. To make the city more liveable and breathable, and to reduce excessive heat, public spaces and gardens were deliberately created, streets greened and pedestrianised, and rooftop gardens covering a third of the city’s area specially focused on. This QoC Compendium details how Paris went green and more liveable. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read about climate change and environment stories from across the world – a study in Chennai shows how indoor heat stress may impact comfort levels at night; tree growth rings testifying climate change in the Amazon; over-extraction of aquifer is sinking Mexico city; heat may play spoilsport in Fifa world cup; and rising temperatures, drought can worsen wildfires across the world.

Hope you find this edition engaging and worthwhile. We would love to hear from you at [email protected]. If you haven’t yet subscribed to Question of Cities, do so here and share our work on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Smruti
May 15, 2026