Sustainability - Question of Cities

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 Mumbai, shows the failure of politics to respond to people’s needs, in a sense. The triad of roti-naukri-makaan…

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…

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 its governance but institutional actors have largely failed. Top-down policies and the Mumbai Climate Action Plan, a non-statutory…

How Bengaluru, once the land of a thousand lakes, can rework its water plan

The warning bells have sounded for the aspirational tech-city as residents struggle with water scarcity yet again and tankers move about supplying…

Portraits of Bengaluru neighbourhoods struggling without water

The modest and low-income neighbourhood of Krishnaiyyanapalya in East Bengaluru exemplifies domestic life in the face of acute water shortage. With their…