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

Public housing calls for governments to regulate land prices

High land prices in our cities, which do not follow the supply-demand equation, determine how land is used, what kind of houses are built and in which areas, what amenities and infrastructure are accessible to whom. There’s no way that…

‘Private interests accumulate land through force or power. That’s a big problem’

If governments want equitable, sustainable and inclusive cities, they should understand how policies and planning can influence land use and the creation…

Wayanad’s lessons on how not to manufacture ecological disasters

The 572-millimetres rain in two days triggering massive landslides in Wayanad shook the nation. Beyond the rising death toll and large-scale devastation…

From ground zero: Human decisions worsened climate tragedy in Wayanad

Even as the challenge of rehabilitating the landslide-affected looms large, the disaster raises other issues. Once a dense forest, Wayanad now has…

Dehradun model of development is unsustainable, ecologically hazardous

Once a quaint hill station nestled in the Himalayas, cradling many public institutions of learning and research, Dehradun has seen rapid growth…

‘Maharashtra had 1,500 landslides in 2021, so 1,500 lessons but nothing learnt’

The Wayanad landslides bring back memories of last year’s landslide in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, on the Sahyadri range of the Western Ghats…

Making new cities in climate emergency calls for respecting nature

A city does not exist outside of its natural conditions, no matter how much air conditioning or bottled water we use. As…

How Navi Mumbai developed into an urban jungle edging out nature

The planned satellite city on the outskirts of the oversaturated Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, was built from scratch. Its landscape was once an ecologically-rich rural one with hill ranges, dozens of wetlands, creeks and intertidal areas, tropical semi-evergreen and deciduous vegetation,…

‘Why Joshimath, Mussoorie and Nainital are also threatened towns’

When Joshimath, a hill town in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, suffered the destruction caused by subsidence in January, the large infrastructure projects…

Battered and forgotten, Joshimath holds a lesson in urbanising at the cost of environment

It’s been more than three months since the subsidence in the hill town of Joshimath, Uttarakhand, made headlines. Deep cracks appeared in…