Children - Question of Cities

When childhood is scarred by shelling and play is perilous

When sirens blare, homes are blacked out, drones and war planes hover in the skies above, and shelling punctures the peace of the night, as it happened with the India-Pakistan war this May, among other fallout is the setback to…

How children co-created 250 metres of happiness around schools

What started out as a project in one Delhi school to make the area safer for children and meaningful for the community,…

Want to invent leisure from leftovers? Laggere shows the way

Pushed into congested homes in the city’s margins, the children of the resettlement colony in Bengaluru’s Laggere have evolved their own ways…

‘In India, play is a luxury…parents and teachers should understand its importance’

As cities expand, the number of open spaces and in-between spaces for play are shrinking. Playgrounds and gardens are an afterthought. Mumbai…

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…

Designing urban spaces for children’s mental well-being

In national emergencies such as pandemics, natural disasters, and war-like situations, it is the physical and social fabric that keeps the society…

Why we must plan and build child-responsive cities in India – now

Children and urban development are rarely discussed in the same sentence. Given the definitive research on children’s physical, cognitive, and social development…

The journey from dingy to vibrant, meaningful spaces in Govandi

The cramped and ill-maintained Natwar Parekh Compound in Mumbai’s Govandi is hardly a place children can feel at home, run around, explore the world and learn. But they, facilitated by civil society organisations, have turned their dingy spaces into Kitab…

If lakes are built over, where will water go, ask Bengaluru kids

What it means to see a city through young eyes and reflect on questions that adults bypass, consciously or unconsciously, came through…

‘A happy city is where joy is not a commodity’

Rapid and unplanned urbanisation has hardly left open spaces for children. The carefree running, the cycling without the fear of speeding vehicles,…