Archives - Question of Cities

Plan not for riverfronts, plan
for natural edges and ecology of rivers

Regulatory systems for urban rivers prescribe fixed distances for riparian or buffer zones which contradict the very nature of rivers whose edges are never fixed. Policies oversimplify the fluid boundaries into hard lines. Rivers vary across space as well as…

How Chennai can – and must – rebuild its relationship
with water

The way the city has been built – hard infrastructure encroaching on water bodies – denies it the ability to safely move its waters across the landscape during the monsoon, and to store and use them during the drier months.…

Kochi: Notes on unequal ecologies of inhabitation

The city that water made is being unmade by water, at an accelerated pace. But the unmaking is uneven and reflects the fractured violences of caste, class, and feudal-mercantile-colonial spatial logic. In places along the coast like Chellanam or wetland…

Shimla and Kullu mountains send feedback; we ignore
and build

The hill town with the old water system built in tune with gravity now has water anxiety and private rooftop reservoirs, covered in iron grills to protect them from monkeys. In Kullu, the market dances to the tune of the…

Nagpur’s rivers and lakes see huge construction,
Rs 200 crore fountains

Nagpur’s water network – Nag River, Pili and Pora flowing into it, Ambazari and Futala lakes – was its natural cooling infrastructure. Construction and pollutants have shrunk it from 5.76 percent to barely 1.08 percent of the city’s area in…

Three loops of learning to rethink the cities-ecosystems relationship

For climate adaptation to move from crisis management to a transformative rethinking of urban life, the three loops of learning framework – improving immediate responses, questioning planning assumptions to integrate ecology, and building adaptive co-management – is useful. Bengaluru’s floods…

Building with nature not a luxury, calls for political will

Amid the transformation in cities, a question steadily crowded out is what happens to the ecological systems when urban land is treated primarily as a surface for construction. Urban tree canopies, water bodies and wetlands, green spaces and corridors are…

Multispecies Justice and the political economy of Shillong

Multispecies justice recognises that humans are deeply interconnected with a host of other species but this is hardly represented in urban planning. Shillong, as part of the Smart Cities Mission, saw built-up areas expand as scattered, unregulated development interspersed with…

Delhi has plans to restore
the Ridge. Ecologists
have questions

Can humans truly build a forest with a few native species and art-themed woodlands has been the lingering question since the first of the 70 lakh saplings were planted this month in the Central Ridge. Restoration plans should have furthered…

Wayanad’s mountains have spoken, again. Who’s listening?

The recent Kalladi landslide showed that, like fear after the Choolarmala landslides two years ago, key questions too did not fade. Just how much cutting, tunnelling and construction can these mountains absorb, how much engineering intrusion is too much? The…