Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

Community gardens redefine green, help combat heat

Collectively created and managed by communities in their neighbourhoods, community gardens, more than public or private parks, not only make the space more accessible to more people but can be tailored to local contexts and needs, offer produce such as…

The ‘build more’ way has failed. How to build better cities?

The construction industry, India’s second-largest contributor to the national GDP, rules the roost in cities, determining housing and other basic amenities, turning…

Seeing the unseen nature amidst Mumbai’s expanding concrete

A casualty of the build more approach is the erasure of precious natural wealth. Amidst the concrete maze of Mumbai-Navi Mumbai, there…

‘Better dust upon leaves than in the lungs of the citizens’

Patrick Geddes, the Scottish biologist, conservationist, sociologist and town planner who spent long years working in India, believed it was important that…

Wayanad rebuilds but discounts people’s needs and
nature-based development

Nearly nine months after devastating landslides flattened large areas in the northern part of Wayanad district, the process of building back –…

How much has your city expanded its footprint of
built-up area?

In cities across India, people speak of how much more construction they see in familiar areas. But how much exactly has been…

‘Deep flaw or blind spot in Indian environmentalism is that it largely ignored cities’

Cities built at the cost of ecology are becoming uninhabitable and unsustainable. Between the Gandhian perspective which is hostile to city life…

Feminism meets environmentalism but women left out of decision-making

As women, across barriers of caste and class and other social indices, assert themselves, they also touch upon environmental issues that are deeply tied to their lives, living conditions, work and more. They raise voices as women demanding gender justice…

Resistance, confrontation,
anti-extractivist struggles in the Global South

Rising heat waves, illegal mining, degradation of water bodies and depletion of trees are increasing across the world, especially in countries of…

Margins to mainstream: Ambojwadi shows the way to climate vulnerability mapping

Among the most marginalised of informal settlements in Mumbai, Ambojwadi is a picture of climate crisis where heat stress and flooding exacerbate…