Gender - Question of Cities

Micro-mapping streets and footpaths in a neighbourhood, as a woman

We walk by on badly-designed streets and footpaths or race across at ill-planned traffic intersections made to facilitate vehicles rather than pedestrians, and come to believe that this is a part of wretched and stressful life in a city. Walking…

Anniversary Edition

Making nature and people in cities the focal point of dialogues

As Question of Cities completes a year, we present to you some of the best and the most-read essays or on-ground stories through the year – with the added value of having the writers reflect on a few key questions.…

Wanted: Safe and affordable housing for working women in cities

The basic human right to safe and affordable housing eludes most working women in cities. They are forced to submit to scrutinising interviews during their house search and forced to agree with a laundry list of conditions while signing the…

Ragpickers: Women workers battle poverty, administrative apathy, Climate Change

It’s a continuous struggle for ragpickers, mostly women, to earn even a meagre amount for survival. They have to brace extreme heat and torrential rain to be out scrounging the roads, garbage bins and discarded waste for bottles, wrappers, and…

‘Mumbai Development Plan is not on paper alone, it makes spatial provisions for women’

The talk of incorporating gender concerns into urban plans has been around for decades but it became a reality only when Mumbai’s Development Plan was unveiled with specific provisions to make land available to provide services to women and other…

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…