Development Plan - Question of Cities

‘In India, play is a luxury…parents and teachers should understand its importance’

As cities expand, the number of open spaces and in-between spaces for play are shrinking. Playgrounds and gardens are an afterthought. Mumbai has seen creative ways to resist the erasure of spontaneous play emerge despite the incessant construction, congestion, and…

Play spaces for adolescents: The missing link in our cities

Urban spaces are currently spaces of adult hegemony designed for their work and mobility. Even when play spaces are built, they are for children but adolescents – at the threshold of childhood and adulthood – are usually left out. India…

How urban plans can, and must, value trees

Urban development plans and master plans have traditionally seen trees as impediments to ‘development’, rarely acknowledging them as natural wealth of cities and hardly making provisions to protect and preserve them. This will no longer work in the time of…

What enraged us and what gladdened us in 2024: An overview

When we look back at the year fast closing upon us all, there was not much to cheer about how our cities were built, how the environment was undermined in the name of development, and how people mostly coped with…

Climate disasters are connected to the way our cities are planned

Cities have completely ignored their natural areas. If mapped and made available on a public database, people can be empowered with the knowledge about them and can decide to protect them. Mapping a city’s ecology can radically change the way…

Insider accounts of precarious lives in a slum and a resettlement colony

What does it mean to live in a slum not only devoid of basic amenities – where even auto rickshaws refuse to ply – but also under the constant threat of demolition? What does it take to rebuild a life…

Mumbai: The way forward from slums to affordable housing

That Mumbai’s slums are a perpetual feature of the city and there is not enough land for affordable housing are manufactured myths. It is possible to use slum land to make affordable houses. A scheme for the redevelopment of slums,…

How Gandhinagar transformed from ‘Gandhian’ city to GIFT City

More than a decade after Chandigarh was built, the planners of Gandhinagar had the opportunity to re-envision a city with different or local influences. Instead, Gandhinagar was an opportunity lost. It furthered the experiment in independent India’s urbanisation trajectory which…

‘Gandhinagar is a green ghost capital city – and hardly Gandhian’

When Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar was conceptualised, it seemed like an ideal place to live in with a vast expanse of greenery. The city has grown in all directions, ignoring the Gandhian principles of minimalism, sustainability, and liveability which are crucial…

Mainstreaming Climate Change in Navi Mumbai’s Development Plan

Navi Mumbai, the satellite city planned and built nearly 50 years ago to decongest Mumbai, has chalked out its draft Development Plan 2018-2038. The plan, however, fails to address ecological issues, especially the imminent hazards brought on by Climate Change.…