Built Environment - Question of Cities

World’s most polluted city: Delhi chokes and struggles through the smog

Delhi, the capital of India, also lives with the dubious tag of being the most polluted city in the world. Even as it is enveloped in a blanket of smog every year, especially in winter, air quality governance is far…

Delhi’s landfills spread health hazards amid buried promises

Mountains of garbage on Delhi’s borders have plagued the city’s residents for decades. Garbage burning adds significantly to the air pollution to…

The myths of ‘public trust’ and ‘affordable housing’ in speculative Mumbai

The development story of Mumbai rests on the routine breach of the ‘public trust doctrine’ which benefits the elite. The Maharashtra government,…

“Mumbai’s housing laws maximise real estate potential, ignore people’s health”

The regulations are rooted in the building codes that were drawn up for the city after the plague of 1896 but, over…

(de)Coding Mumbai: A study of the city’s housing regulations

Architect Sameep Padora and his team “decoded” Mumbai by extensively studying houses and residents through Development Plans. The 18 case studies, spanning…

Indore 2.0 bears no stamp of its first master planner, Sir Patrick Geddes

One of the first cities in India to be planned expansively by the Scottish biologist, geographer and town planner, Sir Patrick Geddes,…

How development control regulations erode the idea of cities

City-making has come to epitomise exclusion and commodification where open spaces and natural environment have been sacrificed to benefit private interests. City…

Central Vista redevelopment could rob Delhi of its iconic public space – and shrink democracy

The once sprawling lawns, wide pathways and iconic buildings at Rajpath in New Delhi are being erased by the Rs 13,450-crore Central Vista redevelopment project which began in 2019. The India Gate and the Rajpath area, the largest public space…

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…

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,…