Archives - Question of Cities

A reality-based, sustainable urban planning order

The abysmal living conditions and perpetual stress for millions in cities like Mumbai are not accidental but the intended outcome of planning that’s increasingly skewed towards exclusive city-making and profiteering. The prevailing approach to planning has manufactured social and ecological…

What do Mumbai’s buildings owe the street?

Modern architecture has become mesmerised by the skyline and silhouette, and forgotten the human scale, the intimate two metres at which people experience the building. Bandra Kurla Complex, among similar areas, show the now default typology of blank podium towers,…

Woh kuche, woh galiyaan, mohalle kahan hain?

The narrow streets, winding lanes, and intimate localities were once the social spaces at the threshold of public and private life. Beyond nostalgia, their rapid erasure or deliberate destruction must be reflected upon. The aangan (courtyard) and kotha (terrace), for…

The vertical Panopticon: Architectural violence in rehab towers

The multi-storeyed rehabilitation towers for slum dwellers, by their design, are nothing less than the intensification of the very conditions in slums they seek to mitigate and are so restrictive that residents can be watched all the time by others.…

Godavari on the edge: Faith, floods, and the politics
of preparation

The preparations for the Simhastha Kumbh Mela are not merely a logistical exercise but also an act of (re)configuring the Godavari itself reflecting the tensions between religiosity, urban development, and the ecological materialities of a river under stress. Recasting the…

The Godavari walk unravels a river waiting to fight back

Nashik’s ancient mythological, historical and contemporary connection with the Godavari is symbolised in the Panchvati area and, within it, specifically in the Ramkund. This is today a strange confluence of mythology, chemistry and modern construction. The area with 17 kunds…

Groundwater as critical as the Godavari for Nashik’s
water security

Water supply was shut down every Saturday in many parts of Nashik this May, something that has not happened in about 20 years. The lack of respect for the Godavari River and its unmonitored overuse was one reason; the other…

De-concretise to revive the Godavari, its ancient kunds

Natural springs kept the Godavari River in Nashik flowing and many of the 17 kunds (reservoirs or tanks) filled with water even in summer. Ancestral houses in the city’s Panchvati area, near Ramkund, had the natural springs too. However, during…

‘Build the roads and bridges
for the Kumbh, but save
the Godavari’

Maharashtra’s ancient city, Nashik, by the Godavari is on an overdrive to prepare for the Kumbh Mela 2027 where the devout gather every 12 years to take a dip in the sacred water. But the river is struggling to flow.…

Following the Godavari in Nashik: A Fact Sheet

The Godavari is India’s second longest river after the Ganga. The river, which passes through five states – Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha – and parts of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherry and sustains millions of people, has…