Climate Change - Question of Cities

Walk through Mumbai’s oldest dock, meet its fishing community

At the 147-year-old Sassoon Dock, at the very tip of Mumbai, the organised mess and noisy routine involves thousands of people who live off fishing activities. The morning drill, from 3.30am to 10am, starts from catching fish to selling and…

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’. The poor survive in an Indian city because the reach of master planning is weak, granting them space…

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 planned city, but rapid concretisation and haphazard constructions have taken over, changing its landscape drastically and turning it…

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 country’s first Heat Action Plan to mitigate the impact of high and rising temperature on people and economy.…

‘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 future: Was India was doing enough to mitigate it, would Heat Action Plans help combat the heat waves,…

How Mumbai lost its open spaces, water bodies

Mumbai’s growth in the British era and post-independence years saw a frenzy of construction. This ‘development’ came at a cost. The city lost water bodies, marsh lands, open spaces and green zones. As population multiplied and the city expanded, more…

Sinking Mumbai: Have we woken up to the climate crisis and rising sea level?

Most parts of South Mumbai will be under water by 2050, drowning prominent landmarks and businesses, warned the chief of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation last year. There are contesting projections of just how much of the financial capital will be submerged…

Growing pains: Why Chennai’s run-in with disasters will only worsen

The growth of Tamil Nadu’s flood-prone and water-scarce capital has come at a cost. As Chennai looks to expand, the increasing built-up areas and shrinking water bodies could well be a recipe for disaster. Chennai faces multiple ecological challenges in…