Dear readers,

As cities expand, their peripheries and peri-urban areas are now pursued as the next milestone of urban development. The process redefines the very nature and landscape of these places, leaving far-reaching unmapped impacts on the people, their land and water, the ecology, the lived realities of social relationships and cultural contexts. More often than not, the city-making is limited to land acquisition, spatial planning, construction, and occupation in which the original inhabitants are pushed to the margins. But the peripheries of cities are not merely lands waiting to be urbanised. This edition of Question of Cities, seventh in our series on the Built Environment, examines how the top-down urbanisation of the peripheries reshapes them and changes lived realities. Read the essays from Bengaluru, Goa, Delhi, and interviews from the planned Third Mumbai area.

The lead essay finds that, in Ramagondanahalli outside Bengaluru, the planned layout modes of expansion have (re)produced new forms of spatial inequality, ecological stress, infrastructural fragmentation, and socio-economic uncertainty. Written by noted planner-researcher Anjali Karol Mohan, social impact practitioner Neeth D’souza, and environmental planner Justin Andrews Jeganathan, the essay shows why peri-urban land is not merely a productive asset but an inheritance of memory, labour, and identity, its richness rooted in ecological sufficiency, abundance, and social cohesion. Ramagondanahalli raises critical questions: In what ways can urban planning acknowledge rural landscapes as not subordinate to the urban and go beyond monetary compensation? How might built environments be designed to sustain, rather than sever, relationships between people, land, and water? Read it here.

Architect and regional planner Tahir Fernando de Noronha argues that Goa adopted the language of comprehensive planning but not the practice. Regional Plans and Comprehensive Development Plans were to guide urbanisation but it is the Outline Development Plans (ODPs), a temporary measure, that now hold sway. These are repeatedly extended and revised because there were no statutory consequences for not preparing the comprehensive plan and this temporary plan is useful to developers and politicians. The challenge is to institute a planning process capable of combining ecological knowledge, local participation, clear enumerated projects, and a spatial vision rather than iterations of the ODP which allow developers and politicians to wield far too much influence in shaping our cities. Read it here.

As cities evolve outwards, they engulf villages and agricultural lands, leading to concerns about environmental sustainability and fragmented landscapes, writes architect, urban designer and researcher Chetna Garg. Pooth Khurd, a 300-year-old agrarian Jat settlement northwest of Delhi, has experienced major changes since the Delhi Development Authority began land pooling about two decades ago for urbanisation and the Urban Extension Road. Villages in Greater Noida, Gurugram, and gamtals outside Ahmedabad have been encircled by urbanisation but remain spatially and socially disconnected from the urban fabric. An alternative Rurban development model, based on a collaborative framework, includes village communities as stakeholders in planning, enables a seamless integration, and transforms socio-economic conditions while keeping cultural diversities. Read it here.

Urban expansion in the national capital has meant re-classifying hundreds of ‘rural villages’ as ‘urban villages’ to integrate them into the city. These become a peculiar mix of the lingering rural and the advancing urban in their built form, people-place relationships, and ecology. Multimedia journalist Ankita Dhar Karmakar brings voices from the ground in Rawta, in southwest Delhi, that is on the brink of being re-classified as ‘urban village’. People do not demand this model of ‘development’ but only want access to potable water, assured water for irrigation from Sahibi River which suffered as Delhi’s footprint expanded to the peripheries (primarily Gurugram), and cleaning the sewage in the Najafgarh drain that inundates their farms. Read it here.

Third Mumbai, or the Karnala-Sai-Chirner (KSC) New Town project, aims to decongest Mumbai while creating a new economic hub across 124 villages of Raigad abutting the Navi Mumbai International Airport and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority. The plans may be grand but the locals are not convinced, land taken from some of them for the Maha Mumbai Special Economic Zone has not been returned though the project was scrapped 15 years ago, the Letters of Consent now prohibit them from ever approaching courts in land deals, and the process of seeking was rushed without hearings, say activists Ulka Mahajan and Surekha Dalvi,  All India Kisan Sabha leader Sanjay Thakur, and local leader of the Congress Nanda Mhatre in separate interviews with QoC’s writer-illustrator Nikeita Saraf. Read it here.

In our regular section, News Digest, read why Maharashtra declared 265 talukas as drought-hit; UN declaration of sea level rise; Housing crisis protests force Spain to ban evictions until 2030; UN Food and Agriculture Organization urges govts to make forest restoration a national priority; Eleven IPCC lead authors found with conflict of interest.

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Thank you,
Smruti
October 2, 2026