Question of Cities - Forum for nature, people and sustainability

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Chennai mapping

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Edition 77: Gig and platform workers

At Hyderabad airport, drivers agitate for the bare minimum

It took nearly ten years, collectivisation, and dogged unionising for the drivers of aggregator taxis at the Rajiv Gandhi International…

‘Women’s access to gig work is challenged by their access to digital infrastructure’

Platforming domestic work will amplify existing vulnerabilities of workers

South Asian domestic worker abuse and activism in New York

This Edition

Local knowledge

Local languages

News Digest

Edition 80: Board the bus

The BEST Museum as Mumbai’s memoir – and more

A well-curated transport museum is a significant historical documentation and the story of a city. How ironic then that the…

Shab-Parak: Night fliers of Delhi bus that’s a community

‘BEST is a municipal responsibility, it’s stupid to
think of profit-loss’

Guwahati’s buses a lifeline but unequal, tedious, sometimes unsafe

Mumbai’s BEST is being killed, political will to revive it is absent

Should the city have robust, reliable and affordable public bus transport or not is the question facing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the Maharashtra government. The approximately 3.3 million commuters of BEST buses would vote a resounding yes, if they…

The ‘build more’ way has failed. How to build better cities?

The construction industry, India’s second-largest contributor to the national GDP, rules the roost in cities, determining housing and other basic amenities, turning natural areas and common property resources into buildings or highways, and yet failing to address the shortfall in…

‘Deep flaw or blind spot in Indian environmentalism is that it largely ignored cities’

Cities built at the cost of ecology are becoming uninhabitable and unsustainable. Between the Gandhian perspective which is hostile to city life and the other that cities are engines of growth, both flawed, cities face ecological crisis and issues of…

How urban plans can, and must, value trees

Urban development plans and master plans have traditionally seen trees as impediments to ‘development’, rarely acknowledging them as natural wealth of cities and hardly making provisions to protect and preserve them. This will no longer work in the time of…

Move the air pollution needle to smaller and neglected cities

Conversations and policies on air pollution are mostly centred on Delhi and Mumbai but other cities and towns have been facing toxic air too. These are, at best, footnotes in national conversations on air pollution. Authorities here go in for…

We want safe cities, we want feminist cities

The heinous rape-murder of a doctor in Kolkata sparked off heated discussions on women’s safety in cities. Safety of women anywhere is non-negotiable, it is the bare minimum, and it is not entirely women’s responsibility. Women also need to be…

Pune’s growth story reminds us that nature does not send an invoice

As Pune amalgamates larger non-urban areas into the city limits, expanding in all directions, the frenzy of development has also meant fast-depleting natural areas. The frequent floods and harsh summers are alarms that can no longer be ignored. As the…

Urgent heat conversations and actions we need in India to cool down cities

As millions of Indians struggle through an relentlessly scorching summer with never-before high temperatures, Heat Action Plans have become critical to people’s lives and livelihoods. Although states and cities have prepared plans – and some have fitfully implemented them –…

Centring climate justice in rapidly urbanising cities of South Asia

The region is among the most vulnerable to climate change. With nearly 2.5 billion people and a limited capacity to adapt to climate change, South Asia shows how inequity and injustice lie at the heart of climate action. Billions in…

Ladakh: The meltdown in the cold desert as people fast for nature

What Shimla’s construction in defiance of its mountain ecology means

Sinking city: Climate risk, adaptation and urban governance in Mumbai

QoC Specials

QoC takes a powerful idea to The Nature of Cities festival: Join us on this journey

‘By leaves we live, the world is mainly a vast leaf colony’

They are everywhere, although hidden sometimes, but provide a layer of comfort amidst the grey concrete. Lush green landscapes not only soothe the eyes but allow people-nature bonds to form in cities. As a business place for hawkers, resting place…

Streets are sutradhars of people’s lives, first units of neighbourhoods

Streets, as living and meeting spaces for people, are more than roads. Street-based neighbourhoods reflect social cohesion and inclusiveness in cities but streets are being transformed into roads where people’s presence matters the least. Shop-fronted roads, built for consumptive economy…

‘We are scared that the polluted Mithi might flood again’

As Mumbai’s most prominent river and natural drainage channel, the Mithi has mostly been struggling to flow despite the restoration work after the destructive 2005 floods. The pollution, concretisation and encroachment that led to Mithi’s pathetic state have also impacted…

Dharavi makeover: Public loss, private gain in this mother of all redevelopment projects

Among the largest informal settlements in the world, Dharavi in Mumbai, is finally set to undergo redevelopment. Aptly called an informal city within a city, the vibrant settlement, though lacking in basic amenities, is home to nearly a million people…

Jaga: Odisha’s land title to slum dwellers worthy of emulation

In a landmark move, pushed by slum dwellers’ movements, the Odisha government introduced a law which made the Jaga Mission possible. Instead of evicting slum dwellers from nearly 3,000 slums in its cities, including from prime areas in the capital…

Dharavi makeover: Public loss, private gain in this mother of all redevelopment projects

Anniversary Edition

Showcasing our one-year journey

Jane Jacobs for generations: Protester, urban thinker, people’s planner

Streets and sidewalks – often regarded as mundane — have immense significance in Jane Jacobs’ urban design vocabulary. Living and working in New York and Toronto, Jacobs (1916-2006) observed, scrutinised, and engaged with cities to emphasise people-centric planning. She is…

Planning and building gender-inclusive cities is the need of the hour

Women and other genders interact differently with the city from the way men do. What work they do, where they live, how they commute, and how they spend leisure hours are determined by what the city offers them – and…

Urban festivals: Beyond art are difficult dialogues and political mobilisation

‘Urban art festivals are event-centric. They can be visceral provocations and part of a larger ongoing public discourse’

Urban landscape changes as stories, talents emerge from Mumbai’s lesser-known public spaces

Creating the right environment and spaces to make voices heard

Water in the city: A matter of ecology, public health, and livelihoods

The importance of wetlands and waterbodies in urban planning has come to the fore after the devastating floods in India’s Bengaluru. They absorb and distribute rainwater and the runoff. As the sceptre of capitalist growth continues to affect the waterbodies,…

Bhubaneswar’s urbanisation caught between old temple town and new city

The new city of Bhubaneswar was built from scratch but in the frenzy of building Odisha’s capital, the existing Old Town was pushed into the background. Inclusion and integration were crucial while the new city was being built but there…

Traditional urban planning fails women; make them visible in planning to transform cities

Do women feel safe in cities? Do they get equal job opportunities and amenities as men? A woman’s experience of…

Delhi’s ‘pink ticket’ allows women free travel but what we need is safe travel

“The NGT order on Ennore, though important, is a paper victory. The fisherfolk, primary protagonists of this struggle, have to be involved in its implementation”