Built Environment - Question of Cities

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, Indore in Madhya Pradesh is fast losing its natural beauty and charm. The city’s development is not people-oriented…

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…

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,…

A tall order: Housing as part of the ‘Right to the City’ is long, hard work

The Delhi High Court’s judgment in the Shakur Basti petition in 2019 foregrounded the Right to the City for slum dwellers, bringing…

The right to the Indian city: The need to spatialise human rights in urban India

Informal settlements, despite containing a majority of the people, are treated as an aberration whose marginality is portrayed as ‘the city within the city’.…

Cities, amenities, people: How they stack up

Everyone who lives in a city has the right to the city. It’s a no-brainer but rarely does a city’s infrastructure and amenities become accessible to all, even rarer is people’s participation in city-making. Why do so many in our…

Brace for impact: Brutal heat due to unsustainable urbanisation will wallop the urban poor

Extreme weather events including intense heat waves, among other manifestations of Climate Change, were flagged off years ago in the reports by…

Heat’s on Bhubaneswar, it’s time to heed warnings

Odisha, which has been lauded for its disaster management during cyclones, faces another climate challenge: Heat. Its capital Bhubaneswar started as a…