Right to the City - Question of Cities

‘Urban art festivals are event-centric. They can be visceral provocations and part of a larger ongoing public discourse’

It was the festival time in Mumbai with a number of them making the most of the city’s short-lived winter. Each neighbourhood festival had a different social fabric, brought people together including communities that are otherwise in the margins, asked…

Urban landscape changes as stories, talents emerge from Mumbai’s lesser-known public spaces

The Govandi Arts Festival was an event of many firsts. It brought together communities and people who shared one platform, but many…

Creating the right environment and spaces to make voices heard

Organising an urban festival is like weaving a multi-colour quilt. One of the many challenges is curating the events which will draw…

‘I need to provide for my family, the air doesn’t matter’

The face masks are back in Mumbai – not because of COVID but poor air quality. Over the past two months, Mumbai’s…

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…

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 Development Plan was unveiled with specific provisions to make land available to provide services to women and other…

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…