Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

Delhi’s ‘pink ticket’ allows women free travel but what we need is safe travel

India’s capital city introduced the ‘pink ticket’ in 2019 so that women could commute at virtually no cost. It has had a mixed outcome – while women, especially the working class with tight home budgets, appreciate the saving it allows…

‘We get flash floods but we have never experienced this type of flood’

Assam, and its neighbouring region, was lashed by the harshest monsoon rain in years, resulting in massive inundation and floods across 32…

Assam floods: Infrastructure-led ruptures in the ecological landscape

The extreme rain and floods in Assam last month hit international headlines. As stories of loss and destruction tug at heart and…

Climate migrants: From cyclone-hit Sundarbans to Kolkata’s miserable shanties

The real struggle for those battered by cyclones starts after the calamity when they are forced to leave behind their home, land…

Hyderabad’s Khajaguda Rocks and its ecology yield to posh urban spaces

The luxury apartments, commercial buildings, and spanking new roads at Khajaguda have come up at a huge cost – the loss of…

To build sustainable cities, keep nature and people at centre of urban planning

The rampant destruction of natural areas and biodiversity is significantly contributing to frequent and intense climate events threatening not only our health,…

The right to the Indian city: The need to spatialise human rights in urban India

Informal settlements, despite containing a majority of the people, are treated as an aberration whose marginality is portrayed as ‘the city within the city’.…

Brace for impact: Brutal heat due to unsustainable urbanisation will wallop the urban poor

Extreme weather events including intense heat waves, among other manifestations of Climate Change, were flagged off years ago in the reports by scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The intensity and frequency of heat waves increased this…

Heat’s on Bhubaneswar, it’s time to heed warnings

Odisha, which has been lauded for its disaster management during cyclones, faces another climate challenge: Heat. Its capital Bhubaneswar started as a…

Scorching heat waves demand a review of Ahmedabad’s urban development model

Ahmedabad had a rude wake-up call after an intense heat wave claimed 1,344 lives in May 2010 and it responded with the…