Land Use | Agricultural, industrial, residential and recreational land in urban areas

Private space and public interest in the Indian city

How we choose to imagine the city fundamentally affects whether democratic urban governance serves public interest or gets compromised by increasing privatisation. We tend to imagine it as a conceptual model translatable into technical frameworks such as a master plan.…

How healthcare privatisation undermines population health in cities

The privatisation of healthcare in low- and middle- income cities from Delhi and Mumbai to Nairobi and Lagos means shiny private clinics…

From public good to private control: Land governance and urban exclusion in India

As India’s urban governance changed from mixed-use neighbourhoods to gated colonies, cities transformed reshaping land into a tradable asset disconnected from its…

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…

Walking to un-gender and access civic commons
in Kolkata

Kolkata’s varied urban commons such as lakes, gardens, parks, ghats, streets, and rail tracks mean different things to people, especially women and…

The shrinking public open spaces of Mumbai

There are striking examples of vanishing commons. Open spaces such as maidans, parks, and promenades are claimed by governments for so-called public…

Lessons for Mumbai from New York’s social housing of 1930s

Cities around the world have adopted social housing as an inalienable aspect of city-making. Understanding it as an ecology within cities will…

Overturning a burden: Privatisation of land and city building

From the ideological framework that determines how land is acquired, held and distributed to people’s access to housing and amenities, land use is the most critical aspect of urbanisation. It is the motherboard on which urbanisation unfolds. After the liberalisation…

Reforms in Hyderabad: From World Bank to land bank

The erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh was the World Bank’s first sub-national loan experiment. The eventual privatisation of the public sector and…

Mumbai’s contested land use and the jostle for space

The pattern of land use in India’s commercial capital has meant that it is among the most dense cities in Asia. This…