Dear readers,

How spaces in cities are designed can bridge the gap between surviving and living.  We encounter design and interact with it every day as we live, work, and play in the cities we make our home. Wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, safe road crossings, accessible benches and comfortable spaces, adequate green spaces, open public spaces, and inclusive neighbourhoods with social housing and recreation areas are all a part of how a city’s built environment can be – and must be – designed for cities to be made for people. Good design makes these encounters worthwhile for us and ensures ecological sustainability. Urban design usually gives primacy to functionality and profitability, but design must build in care, inclusivity, and sustainability. Question of Cities, in the fourth of the series on the built environment for better cities, brings you essays from architects, researchers and experts on various aspects of design.

In the lead essay, urban development professional Anuttama Dasgupta puts the spotlight on Bengaluru’s built environment that has been remodelled in a neoliberal vision with flyovers which create uncrossable roads, more traffic, heat, dust and inaccessible spaces for man. The city once known for balancing gated enclosures with open, tree-lined, planned neighbourhoods has turned alienating and disquieting with the business parks, gated communities, and flyovers fragmenting it. A different city is possible, with stronger planning and environmental regulation, socially and ecologically connected public spaces, and neighbourhood level initiatives that rebuild connections between people, nature and the city, she writes. Read it here.

In Mumbai’s Lallubhai Compound, a resettlement and rehabilitation colony, children co-created the 13,000 square feet of derelict land strewn with trash into the Indradhanush Garden that they now use and care for. Richa Bhardwaj and Marina Joseph, from Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), argue that the  Development Control Regulations enabled higher-density rehabilitation housing but did not adequately account for educational and social infrastructure in these colonies. Drawing from the still-relevant YUVA study of 2019, they write that DCR 33(10) 3.11 actively shapes the relocated children’s access to education, play and social life. Read it here.

Once the hub and home of traders from Gujarat, the transformation of Kozhikode’s Gujarati Street as an ‘art street’ is considered its rebirth with a new heritage-cultural entrepreneurship, repurposed walls, and structures turned into aesthetic cultural establishments. Anjana S, a PhD scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, critically examines the street’s restructuring and argues that it is not merely aesthetic or economic. Although access to the street is open, cultural capital, economic privilege, and aesthetic sense determines who claims it in its commodified form. Gujarati Street draws inspiration from Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Fort Kochi, but building an ‘art street’ signifies building a public. Read it here.

Architecture professional Partha Ranjan Das takes us through the design plan of Rajarhat New Town, the satellite city to Kolkata, and opines that its design neither draws inspiration from the old city nor does it satisfy the demands of a satellite town. Most new towns were designed without studying the mother cities of which they are supposed to be extensions. Citing the example of the design of Kirchsteigfeld in Germany and Dos Rios in Manila, Philippines, he writes that they studied the existing traditions and adapted them to a contemporary idiom. But Rajarhat New Town has become only an ideal place to buy a second home. Read it here.

What design elements have fallen out of favour? From Assam’s flood-resilient Chang ghars, Kerala’s clay-tiled roofs and kaavi floors, to Rajasthan’s kota stone and lime floors, traditional materials and forms suited to local conditions are now replaced by concrete and marble. Similarly, courtyards, verandahs and open spaces that created opportunities for social interaction and community life are no longer favoured in cities. The challenge is to stop treating buildings simply as real estate and rethink them as habitat – shaped by climate, ecology, culture and the people who use them. Team QoC puts together a compendium of some of these design elements. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read about the Delhi Master Plan 2047 that proposes more houses and Yamuna floodplain revamp; Unregulated mining in Nagaland and Assam blamed for floods; a report finds only 16 of 91 National Clean Air Programme cities meet the WHO benchmark; Changing atmosphere could be affecting our blood.

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.

Thank you,
Smruti
August 21, 2026