Interview - Question of Cities

‘This year’s Yamuna floods are a trailer of bigger floods to hit Delhi’

New Delhi and parts of the National Capital region (NCR) struggled through a massive flood in July, the likes of which had not been seen in many decades, certainly since 1978. Yamuna River breached its previous highest flood level by…

‘Mumbai’s development not being done as per its extreme climate risks’

India’s financial capital, Mumbai, witnessed its worst flood in July 2005. Since then, it has found a place in the list of world’s coastal cities projected to be at risk from floods, cyclones, storm surges and sea level rise due…

‘Why Joshimath, Mussoorie and Nainital are also threatened towns’

When Joshimath, a hill town in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, suffered the destruction caused by subsidence in January, the large infrastructure projects were halted but it may have been a bit too late. It was mere damage control. Numerous committees,…

‘Urban art festivals are event-centric. They can be visceral provocations and part of a larger ongoing public discourse’

It was the festival time in Mumbai with a number of them making the most of the city’s short-lived winter. Each neighbourhood festival had a different social fabric, brought people together including communities that are otherwise in the margins, asked…

‘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…

‘Every rupee a city spends now on projects must have a climate lens’

If cities are at the forefront of mitigation and adaptation against Climate Change, then a network of cities forged across international borders would go a long way in addressing the issue. Mayors and leaders of cities in the international C40…

‘We need a thorough review of, not mere amendments to, environmental laws’

We have the right to a healthy environment. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the environment and ensure a good quality of life. But the massive “unsustainable” development across the country by destroying the ecology has created…

‘Why do we not see that our cities have come up around rivers?’

There is a severe stress on our rivers when we treat them like a resource which can be exploited instead of protecting them. Across cities in India, the story of rivers is similar -- heavily polluted with industrial and household…

‘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…

‘We need to ask where our data is being used and who is encashing it’

What does digitalisation look like in the urban periphery, the smaller towns? Urban studies scholars and researchers set out to Bhiwandi, on Mumbai’s periphery and part of the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region, to try to answer the question. In the…