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Question of Cities

Question of Cities

Menumenu

Shobha Surin

  • Built Environment
  • Natural Environment
  • Urban Planning

How much has your city expanded its footprint of
built-up area?

In cities across India, people speak of how much more construction they see in familiar areas. But how much exactly has been built? What does the data tell us? There’s no clarity, especially for common folk who do not have…
By Nikeita Saraf and Shobha SurinApril 4, 2025
Read more
  • Built Environment
  • Children
  • Right to the City

Physical space and mobility top two challenges for children in 300+ cities: LSE research

How the built environment and policy decisions of cities can support or hinder healthy early childhood development and what city officials identify as the biggest challenges were subjects of research analyses from 358 cities across 75 countries at LSE Cities,…
By Shobha SurinMarch 21, 2025
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  • Built Environment
  • Green Buildings
  • Sustainability

Moving towards sustainable goals brick by brick

The green building movement has been gaining momentum in India with governments doling out incentives. A recent report ranks India third in the world for certified green buildings. However, outdated bye-laws of urban local bodies and the lack of awareness…
By Shobha SurinFebruary 21, 2025
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  • Climate Change
  • Natural Environment
  • Trees

How urban plans can, and must, value trees

Urban development plans and master plans have traditionally seen trees as impediments to ‘development’, rarely acknowledging them as natural wealth of cities and hardly making provisions to protect and preserve them. This will no longer work in the time of…
By Shobha Surin and Jashvitha DhageyJanuary 24, 2025
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  • Air Pollution
  • Climate Change
  • Natural Environment

Move the air pollution needle to smaller and neglected cities

Conversations and policies on air pollution are mostly centred on Delhi and Mumbai but other cities and towns have been facing toxic air too. These are, at best, footnotes in national conversations on air pollution. Authorities here go in for…
By Shobha SurinDecember 13, 2024
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  • Climate Change
  • Sustainability
  • Urban Planning

‘Developing countries are struggling to get climate-related finance’

As the global powers work out the finance needed to address devastating climate change impacts in the developing world, for which the developed world is largely responsible, the focus has to be within India too. What kind of resources are…
By Shobha SurinNovember 29, 2024
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  • Goa
  • Built Environment
  • Natural Environment

‘Goa has successful ecological movements but we should not have to keep doing this’

From a languid destination for vacations, Goa has turned into a hotspot for tourism projects, real estate development, and large investments. Village lands, khazan lands, lush forests, and a natural water network have come under intense pressure from massive development…
By Shobha SurinNovember 15, 2024
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  • Festivals
  • Natural Environment
  • Pollution

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…
By Shobha SurinNovember 1, 2024
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  • Gender
  • Right to the City
  • Urban Planning

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…
By Shobha SurinOctober 18, 2024
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  • Urban Planning
  • Collective Action
  • Sustainability

‘Keep environmental justice at the core, not mere environmentalism’

India’s economic growth model, which is based on passing costs to the poor and marginalised while the benefits are for another class of people, makes environmental justice urgent. Environmental issues are seen as problems to be solved with technological interventions,…
By Shobha SurinOctober 4, 2024
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Question of Cities is India’s only online journal dedicated to urbanisation, ecology and social equity. We strive to document stories and develop dialogues on these themes to imagine, create and re-create cities. The journal is published by the Mumbai-based trust, Participatory Urban Design and Development Initiative (PUDDI).
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