Right to the City - Question of Cities

Delhi’s direct line from air pollution to disease

With the onset of winter in Delhi, smog is back and so are a plethora of diseases. The impact of air and water pollution on health is worsening, not sparing even the young. Lung ailments and heart diseases have become…

Wanted: Safe and affordable housing for working women in cities

The basic human right to safe and affordable housing eludes most working women in cities. They are forced to submit to scrutinising…

Planning and building gender-inclusive cities is the need of the hour

Women and other genders interact differently with the city from the way men do. What work they do, where they live, how…

‘Mumbai Development Plan is not on paper alone, it makes spatial provisions for women’

The talk of incorporating gender concerns into urban plans has been around for decades but it became a reality only when Mumbai’s…

Digitalisation cannot be an unqualified “smart” solution to urban issues

As many cities become smarter by harnessing digitalisation and technology, sustainable development and ecology have been pushed behind. Smart Cities Mission, offered…

‘We need to ask where our data is being used and who is encashing it’

What does digitalisation look like in the urban periphery, the smaller towns? Urban studies scholars and researchers set out to Bhiwandi, on…

Climate migrants: From cyclone-hit Sundarbans to Kolkata’s miserable shanties

The real struggle for those battered by cyclones starts after the calamity when they are forced to leave behind their home, land…

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…