Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

The final straw: The plan that endangers Mumbai’s
National Park

The draft zonal master plan for the eco-sensitive zone of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park seeks not to protect the forest but to open parts of it for construction. In doing so, the plan ignores the web of life between…

A farce, a road map legitimising environmental destruction

It took the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation nine long years to prepare and release the draft zonal master plan for the eco-sensitive zone…

Walking the faultlines of a forest in the city

Amidst the chaos and cacophony of urban life in Mumbai and Thane, the lush green and quiet paths of the outer areas…

Private space and public interest in the Indian city

How we choose to imagine the city fundamentally affects whether democratic urban governance serves public interest or gets compromised by increasing privatisation.…

Gurgaon and its private
city-making model crumble. What next?

Promoted as a haven of urbanisation and India’s showcase of private entities building a city, Gurgaon turned out to be a case…

Mumbai’s healthcare system shows the public, not the private, matters

With its tertiary and secondary hospitals hardly functioning, the pressure falls on the large public hospitals, most of which are located in…

How healthcare privatisation undermines population health in cities

The privatisation of healthcare in low- and middle- income cities from Delhi and Mumbai to Nairobi and Lagos means shiny private clinics…

From public good to private control: Land governance and urban exclusion in India

As India’s urban governance changed from mixed-use neighbourhoods to gated colonies, cities transformed reshaping land into a tradable asset disconnected from its social utility. Land is reserved for commercial use and high-income housing while informal neighbourhoods are missing from plans.…

Why governments promote private profiteering and undermine public goods

The increasing trend towards privatising public goods and services under the pretext of making them cost-efficient has, in fact, come at a…

‘The ‘two Indias’ in healthcare – can we have a new normal?’

With the under-funded and overwhelmed public healthcare system alongside the private which over-treats in pursuit of profits, India has a peculiar combination,…