Urban Planning | Development and design of urban landscapes

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 life. Now, authorities acknowledge they cannot bring more water to the city. Nearly half its population surviving without…

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…

‘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…

What if women designed the city? A voyage from brutalism to biophilia

Biophilic design which addresses the disconnect between people and the natural world, when adopted by women, can foster healthier and beautiful places. It holds the potential to rectify the negative impacts of Brutalist architecture, descending from modernist planning, which codified…

How most Indian cities moved from public to private transport modes

Public transport, often led by a robust network of cleaner fuel-driven buses, is increasingly seen as the silver bullet in fast-growing cities…

Delhi’s buses hold the key to better public transport and climate action

Between 1981 and 2021, motor vehicles in Delhi increased by a staggering 21 times, showing people’s shift away from public transport. This…