Jashvitha Dhagey - Question of Cities

Plastic chokes drains but bans are not enough

India’s ban on plastic in 2022 was to restrict the manufacture, distribution, stocking, sale and use of 19 single-use plastic items. An impractical approach and flawed implementation has resulted in hordes of plastic waste which chokes stormwater drains, washes up…

See the frayed symbiosis between Mumbai and its shrinking forests

The Adivasis living in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and Aarey Forest, given their deep relationship with the natural forest, struggle to make sense of the intruding city. Natural resources such as water are no longer theirs by right…

Trees: Nature’s canopies against scorched cities and heat waves

It’s known that trees are natural coolers amidst the concrete in our cities. This becomes critical when cities reel under heat waves as they have this summer. Abundant green cover helps to heat-proof cities while an absence of trees exacerbates…

‘We need to design and plan better cities for diverse groups of women’

Women’s lives have rarely been at the heart of planning and design of cities. Even when they have been, city making has prioritised safety, especially in the transport system and public spaces. Without underplaying the need for safer cities, there…

Saving Rani Bagh with women’s power and collaborative campaigns

Women from diverse backgrounds joined hands to save one of Mumbai’s oldest green spaces and botanical garden, Rani Bagh, from construction. Their painstaking and tedious paperwork, awareness campaigns, audio-visual presentations, RTI applications, and archival information gradually ensured that the Brihanmumbai…

Mumbai’s last-mile connectivity matters the most, needs an urgent upgrade

Although Mumbai is hailed for its clockwork-like public transport options such as the suburban trains and local buses that are relatively safe, accessible and affordable, large parts of the city suffer from the last-mile connectivity problem. The last-mile connectivity, or…

Footpaths in India: The dangerous gap between policy and reality

Walking on Indian footpaths is like a hurdle race given the many obstacles present on them. We do not need walkability studies to show how un-walkable our pavements are. Vendors, stall-owners, and other informal market people find themselves constantly pitted…

Wake-up call: India’s air pollution-related deaths among highest in the world

As winter sets in, the air quality in most cities in India turns critically poor. Triggered by climate change, the situation worsens every year, impacting people’s physical and mental health. More than 2.3 million Indians died prematurely due to pollution…

Is there a robust festival economy? You bet, it’s roaring

Festivals spawn their economy as consumption and gifting peaks to coincide with the celebrations. Diwali, Eid, Christmas or any regional or community-specific festival increase footfalls in both the local street markets as well as luxury retail stores, boosting the economy…

Walking through a green Mumbai, meeting special and rare trees

Oasis in a concrete city, areas like the Five Gardens in Dadar Parsi Colony are a veritable treasure trove for naturalists and tree lovers. Here, besides the ubiquitous Banyan and Peepal, less-seen species in Mumbai such as Almond, Copper Pod,…