Archives - Question of Cities

India darshan through festival foods and culinary traditions

People celebrate Diwali with a smorgasbord of foods unique to the traditions of a community or state, influenced by local climates and geographies, but within the boundaries of caste and gender. Besides Diwali, a number of other festivals across India…

Eco-friendly festivals are still a dream

Most festivals have a long way to go to become genuinely sustainable even as greenwashing -- claiming false or exaggerated environmental benefits -- takes hold. Knee-jerk reactions such as banning or restricting firecrackers only days before Diwali hardly help. Purposeful…

Festive memories rustle up flavours of the season

Festivals rekindle nostalgia about the good old days with family and friends – and food. Festivals across India uphold food traditions and age-old kitchen practices which are gradually getting erased as nuclear families and rushed lifestyles do not support elaborate…

Retelling and celebrating the legend of Madurai Veeran

Every year, towns in Tamil Nadu see a unique celebration from the Tamil month of Thai. The local deity, Madurai Veeran, the warrior of Madurai, is venerated through stories that are retold to devotees, mostly Dalits, who consider him as…

Big bold ideas that can change public or affordable housing in our cities

India’s urban housing crisis is well-known. Millions live in slums and jhuggis. The housing paradox in Mumbai and Delhi, now increasingly seen in other cities too, means there is a high shortage of affordable homes and a glut of high-priced…

Zero-fare is women’s ticket to freedom, work, and study

After Delhi rolled out its zero-ticket ride for women in 2019, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana followed. Early reports suggest that it has dramatically increased women’s use of buses, and how and why they commute. It has led to…

‘Waste pickers are treated like step-children but the formal sector can’t work without them’

Most of Bengaluru’s waste used to be dumped in the villages nearby and waste pickers invisibilised despite their critical role. Hasiru Dala has been working to organise them, get government identity cards for them, and make them stakeholders in the…

Building bridges: Why it need not be street vendors versus cities

Though a cityscape is nothing without its street vendors and they are an integral part of a city’s economy providing many services to people across class, they are unwelcome. Its system views them as encroachers while people believe they are…

They woke us up to climate change, and an equitable world

Over the past decades, multilateral agencies and international organisations drew forces together to conduct studies that led to path-breaking reports on environment and development, brought world leaders together to agree on cutting emissions, and laid down the goals and framework…

The spectacular failure of planning cities, as we know it. What next?

The widely-prevalent conventional urban planning framework in India, focused on land use, zoning and building regulations, is out of step with the demands of the time we live in, especially climate change events. Development Plans or Master Plans approach natural…