Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

Centring climate justice in rapidly urbanising cities of South Asia

The region is among the most vulnerable to climate change. With nearly 2.5 billion people and a limited capacity to adapt to climate change, South Asia shows how inequity and injustice lie at the heart of climate action. Billions in…

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…

Bengaluru’s water math is badly failing as ‘zero water days’ loom large

This year’s summer is a trailer for a bigger water crisis in a city which once boasted of great weather and good…

For five pots of water a day, women of Vyasarpadi mortgage lives and health

Chennai’s water distribution network is lopsided. Its northern areas like Vyasarpadi, with poorer and backward caste households, are neglected. Here, women’s daily…

Mumbai’s unquenchable thirst: Overestimating water demand to justify dams

Water to the city has been supplied from seven dams, constructed in the neighbouring rural and forested areas, at great socio-economic and…

Women architects: From slogans to struggle in making gender-inclusive cities

The work of women planners and architects has received little acknowledgment or visibility. That their perspective leads to more inclusive and sustainable…

They broke the glass ceiling to build and design sustainable cities

When we say planners and architects in cities, how many women come to mind? Few and far between. Though women have been an inalienable part of these disciplines for decades, their challenges were tougher than those of their male counterparts,…

‘We need to design and plan better cities for diverse groups of women’

Women’s lives have rarely been at the heart of planning and design of cities. Even when they have been, city making has…

Kitchen stories: Documenting experiences in the least planned spaces of homes

The way a kitchen is designed in a house, it is usually not a comfortable place. The patriarchal thinking that a woman’s…