Sustainability - Question of Cities

Green talk: Included in party manifestos, excluded from campaigns

As slugfests and fiery speeches take centre stage throughout the campaign in the 2024 general elections, environmental issues and climate change which affect one and all have hardly been given space. Manifestos of political parties mention them in varying degrees…

Smart Cities Mission: Reflections on gains and losses, nine years on

Most of the 100 cities chosen under the Smart Cities Mission, launched with great fanfare in 2015, have spent or allocated funds…

M-East Mumbai: Votes don’t improve lives but they vote anyway

The cramped, polluted and neglected civic ward in the city, which houses migrant workers and project-affected persons displaced from other parts of…

Reading the Supreme Court judgment on the Right to Life and climate change

In a judgment that flew below the radar, the Supreme Court of India brought the impact of climate change into sharp focus.…

Mumbai’s urban forests are missing and unrecognised: Report

Around 1,400 hectares of urban forest across 18 locations in Mumbai, from Sion and Trombay to Powai and Goregaon, is almost forgotten…

Linear parks: Adding value to urban landscape

Seamless stretches of green space and blue water courses, opening up possibilities and amenities for the public, are significant characteristics of a…

From nature in cities to imagining cities in nature, for our future

Nature shapes and defines cities, but the prevailing model of city-making equates development with construction at the cost of ecology, purely for…

Ladakh: The meltdown in the cold desert as people fast for nature

The 21-day fast by engineer, educator and activist Sonam Wangchuk in March drew attention to the fragile ecology of Leh-Ladakh and the rights of local people over nature as development projects made a beeline after Article 370 was read down…

What Shimla’s construction in defiance of its mountain ecology means

Over half of Shimla, the hill station from the British era that is still popular among tourists, has been officially classified as…

Sinking city: Climate risk, adaptation and urban governance in Mumbai

Mumbai’s geography makes it one of the cities most vulnerable to climate change. Mitigation and adaptation should be at the forefront of…