Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

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 the city’s prehistoric rocks and an entire ecological system that the rock formation supported. The sprawling 150-acre site,…

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…

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…

‘This may be the coolest summer. Be ready for
51 degrees C’

As most cities in India reeled under heat waves this summer and Climate Change impact made itself evident, questions emerged about the…

How do we design gender-sensitive cities? Start by listening to women and other genders

Cities are not gender-neutral but women and other genders have been ignored while planning and designing a city. So, the specific needs of women such as informal workplaces, day-care centres for children, safe hostels and reliable public transport are yet…