Environment - Question of Cities

Focused on flood management, Mumbai lets down Mithi River ecologically

Twenty years after the July 2005 deluge in Mumbai, the Mithi, pivotal to drain the rain, is still choked, silted and disconnected from the city despite thousands of crores spent to clean it, build embankment walls and sewage treatment plants.…

Rivers are our home (but) what will the waters
remember – plastic?

“The Mithi,” wrote the legendary poet Eunice D’souza, “will carry you on a raft of garbage to a dying sea.” As rivers in our cities turn into receptacles of waste and victims of poor planning, the loss of what they…

Why cities must reconnect with their rivers, renew river-people relationship

Rivers are slowly being erased from people’s lives and imagination in cities. Seen as water sources, as dumping yards for waste, and their floodplains as developable land, they remain disconnected from the rhythms of urban life. Rivers are, can be,…

Vrishabhavathi: A river’s struggle in Bengaluru’s landscape

Our imagination of rivers often contrasts with what we see in our cities. They are integrated into urban systems as stormwater drains, overlaid with sewage lines, carry domestic waste, and in the case of Vrishabhavathi River, become an outlet for…

When climate communication takes creative and non-news forms

Practitioners of creative forms such as theatre, indie films, installations, poetry, stand-up comedy, and card or board games are engaging with the complex and layered information and reports about climate change to present it to their audiences in a new…

The ‘build more’ way has failed. How to build better cities?

The construction industry, India’s second-largest contributor to the national GDP, rules the roost in cities, determining housing and other basic amenities, turning natural areas and common property resources into buildings or highways, and yet failing to address the shortfall in…

Seeing the unseen nature amidst Mumbai’s expanding concrete

A casualty of the build more approach is the erasure of precious natural wealth. Amidst the concrete maze of Mumbai-Navi Mumbai, there are still some treasures tucked away, as this photograph of flamingos shows. The Vihar Lake, the flora-fauna in…

‘Better dust upon leaves than in the lungs of the citizens’

Patrick Geddes, the Scottish biologist, conservationist, sociologist and town planner who spent long years working in India, believed it was important that the natural assets of a town, and everyone’s fair share of them, are protected, nurtured, and integrated into…

How much has your city expanded its footprint of
built-up area?

In cities across India, people speak of how much more construction they see in familiar areas. But how much exactly has been built? What does the data tell us? There’s no clarity, especially for common folk who do not have…

Why we must plan and build child-responsive cities in India – now

Children and urban development are rarely discussed in the same sentence. Given the definitive research on children’s physical, cognitive, and social development being influenced by the spaces they live, travel and play in, the subject deserves more attention – and…