Team QoC - Question of Cities

‘Gandhinagar is a green ghost capital city – and hardly Gandhian’

When Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar was conceptualised, it seemed like an ideal place to live in with a vast expanse of greenery. The city has grown in all directions, ignoring the Gandhian principles of minimalism, sustainability, and liveability which are crucial…

Gandhinagar’s urban sprawl turns greenest city into a planned mess

Like the other planned cities, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar has veered away from the original master plan and developed into an urban jungle. The Sabarmati, on the banks of which the city was planned, is plagued by pollution with the renovation…

A compendium on Odisha’s planned city and its transformation

The interesting story on how Odisha’s capital, Bhubaneswar, was planned and built has found its way into many research papers and reports. German architect Otto Koenigsberger’s master plan emphasised on organising the town “in such a manner that it forms…

A compendium on Chandigarh and Le Corbusier

How Chandigarh came to be built is a well-known story, one that scholars and urban planners revisit every now and then. What Chandigarh’s masterplan stands for, how much of it was realised, why its planner Le Corbusier imagined the Capitol…

How cities enlivened places to make them inclusive and comfortable

Public spaces are for the people. This is often overlooked and the spaces are either neglected or languish as they are misused. Some cities across the world have set examples of how to utilise the spaces, transform them to make…

‘Every rupee a city spends now on projects must have a climate lens’

If cities are at the forefront of mitigation and adaptation against Climate Change, then a network of cities forged across international borders would go a long way in addressing the issue. Mayors and leaders of cities in the international C40…

India’s climate action planning needs ecological vision and social sensitivity

The National Action Plan on Climate Change of 2008 was criticised for lacking depth, vision, and urgency; these have not been addressed in the 2015 revision. There is concern on how individual development projects in cities conform to the climate…

‘We need a thorough review of, not mere amendments to, environmental laws’

We have the right to a healthy environment. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the environment and ensure a good quality of life. But the massive “unsustainable” development across the country by destroying the ecology has created…

‘Mumbai Development Plan is not on paper alone, it makes spatial provisions for women’

The talk of incorporating gender concerns into urban plans has been around for decades but it became a reality only when Mumbai’s Development Plan was unveiled with specific provisions to make land available to provide services to women and other…

‘We need to plan cities for extremes. Climate Change is all about extremes’

The torrential rain and floods in Bengaluru in early September grabbed international attention, showing up wide cracks in the basic infrastructure of the ‘IT capital of India’. Tractors rescued the better off people to safety, the less privileged were left…