Amenities - Question of Cities

Lighting, shadows, and cognitive dissonance in
urban spaces

This essay presents an emerging concern about how urban environments should be understood and designed in terms of lighting, and shows how people experience cognitive dissonance when exposed to fragmented lighting, uncoordinated shadows, and over-illumination in cities such as Mumbai…

Mumbai’s healthcare system shows the public, not the private, matters

With its tertiary and secondary hospitals hardly functioning, the pressure falls on the large public hospitals, most of which are located in…

Why governments promote private profiteering and undermine public goods

The increasing trend towards privatising public goods and services under the pretext of making them cost-efficient has, in fact, come at a…

‘The ‘two Indias’ in healthcare – can we have a new normal?’

With the under-funded and overwhelmed public healthcare system alongside the private which over-treats in pursuit of profits, India has a peculiar combination,…

Play spaces for adolescents: The missing link in our cities

Urban spaces are currently spaces of adult hegemony designed for their work and mobility. Even when play spaces are built, they are…

Placing platform workers in the city’s urban imagination

The city is the place of work for millions of platform or gig workers in India who number an astounding 7.7 million…

At Hyderabad airport, drivers agitate for the bare minimum

It took nearly ten years, collectivisation, and dogged unionising for the drivers of aggregator taxis at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to…

‘Women’s access to gig work is challenged by their access to digital infrastructure’

Women gig workers form a niche and gender-segregated part of the expanding platform and gig economy. It will reportedly provide 90 million jobs in India but its structure is hardly women-friendly. “Even educated women have a lot of challenges when…

Platforming domestic work will amplify existing vulnerabilities of workers

The platform and gig economy took a leap into the unorganised domestic work sector in March when advertisements promised ‘maids’ at a…

We want safe cities, we want feminist cities

The heinous rape-murder of a doctor in Kolkata sparked off heated discussions on women’s safety in cities. Safety of women anywhere is…