Archives - Question of Cities

Hyderabad’s Khajaguda Rocks and its ecology yield to posh urban spaces

The luxury apartments, commercial buildings, and spanking new roads at Khajaguda have come up at a huge cost – the loss of the city’s prehistoric rocks and an entire ecological system that the rock formation supported. The sprawling 150-acre site,…

To build sustainable cities, keep nature and people at centre of urban planning

The rampant destruction of natural areas and biodiversity is significantly contributing to frequent and intense climate events threatening not only our health, but our very survival. The loss of life and property owing to extreme weather events bring forth responses…

Walk through Mumbai’s oldest dock, meet its fishing community

At the 147-year-old Sassoon Dock, at the very tip of Mumbai, the organised mess and noisy routine involves thousands of people who live off fishing activities. The morning drill, from 3.30am to 10am, starts from catching fish to selling and…

A tall order: Housing as part of the ‘Right to the City’ is long, hard work

The Delhi High Court’s judgment in the Shakur Basti petition in 2019 foregrounded the Right to the City for slum dwellers, bringing hope for those who were facing forceful eviction. The verdict, widely seen as progressive, spelled out the rights…

The right to the Indian city: The need to spatialise human rights in urban India

Informal settlements, despite containing a majority of the people, are treated as an aberration whose marginality is portrayed as ‘the city within the city’. The poor survive in an Indian city because the reach of master planning is weak, granting them space…

Cities, amenities, people: How they stack up

Everyone who lives in a city has the right to the city. It’s a no-brainer but rarely does a city’s infrastructure and amenities become accessible to all, even rarer is people’s participation in city-making. Why do so many in our…

Brace for impact: Brutal heat due to unsustainable urbanisation will wallop the urban poor

Extreme weather events including intense heat waves, among other manifestations of Climate Change, were flagged off years ago in the reports by scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The intensity and frequency of heat waves increased this…

Heat’s on Bhubaneswar, it’s time to heed warnings

Odisha, which has been lauded for its disaster management during cyclones, faces another climate challenge: Heat. Its capital Bhubaneswar started as a planned city, but rapid concretisation and haphazard constructions have taken over, changing its landscape drastically and turning it…

Scorching heat waves demand a review of Ahmedabad’s urban development model

Ahmedabad had a rude wake-up call after an intense heat wave claimed 1,344 lives in May 2010 and it responded with the country’s first Heat Action Plan to mitigate the impact of high and rising temperature on people and economy.…

‘This may be the coolest summer. Be ready for
51 degrees C’

As most cities in India reeled under heat waves this summer and Climate Change impact made itself evident, questions emerged about the future: Was India was doing enough to mitigate it, would Heat Action Plans help combat the heat waves,…