Built Environment - Question of Cities

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 hope for those who were facing forceful eviction. The verdict, widely seen as progressive, spelled out the rights…

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…

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…

Scorching heat waves demand a review of Ahmedabad’s urban development model

Ahmedabad had a rude wake-up call after an intense heat wave claimed 1,344 lives in May 2010 and it responded with the…

‘This may be the coolest summer. Be ready for
51 degrees C’

As most cities in India reeled under heat waves this summer and Climate Change impact made itself evident, questions emerged about the…

Cities must reclaim urban land as a collective good beyond private accumulation

Real estate is now the major mode of capital accumulation in our cities. The planning system is expertly manipulated to ensure the profitability of the real estate sector so that if property developers do not get enough, the city gets…