Right to the City - Question of Cities

Gurgaon and its private
city-making model crumble. What next?

Promoted as a haven of urbanisation and India’s showcase of private entities building a city, Gurgaon turned out to be a case study of the limitations and shortcomings of this model. Barely two-three decades later, the cracks are showing. Perennial…

Walking to un-gender and access civic commons
in Kolkata

Kolkata’s varied urban commons such as lakes, gardens, parks, ghats, streets, and rail tracks mean different things to people, especially women and queers. Walking through them is a way to reclaim the commons, initiate conversations about them, de-stigmatise them and…

Overturning a burden: Privatisation of land and city building

From the ideological framework that determines how land is acquired, held and distributed to people’s access to housing and amenities, land use is the most critical aspect of urbanisation. It is the motherboard on which urbanisation unfolds. After the liberalisation…

‘Private interests accumulate land through force or power. That’s a big problem’

If governments want equitable, sustainable and inclusive cities, they should understand how policies and planning can influence land use and the creation of the ‘public realm’, especially for the marginalised. “Governments seem to valorise the idea of private interests because…

Mumbai’s BEST is being killed, political will to revive it is absent

Should the city have robust, reliable and affordable public bus transport or not is the question facing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the Maharashtra government. The approximately 3.3 million commuters of BEST buses would vote a resounding yes, if they…

‘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…

How Delhi’s poor and homeless beat the heat on their own

The country’s capital recorded this year’s first heat wave in early April, with temperatures touching 40.2 degrees Celsius. With summer making an early and harsh onset, the most vulnerable people – the homeless – have only themselves to rely upon…

Placing platform workers in the city’s urban imagination

The city is the place of work for millions of platform or gig workers in India who number an astounding 7.7 million in official records but could well be three times that. Yet, the relationship between them and the city…

At Hyderabad airport, drivers agitate for the bare minimum

It took nearly ten years, collectivisation, and dogged unionising for the drivers of aggregator taxis at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to get even a resting room for themselves. Their fight for other basic amenities continues. But, as two of…

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…