Urban planning - Question of Cities

Adivasis in cities: From people to paupers

A complex set of factors from displacement by huge development projects to landlessness and inadequate employment opportunities has pushed adivasis from their ecosystems in isolated lands and forests and into cities. Here, they provide services mostly in the informal sector…

Mumbai’s shiny new Coastal Road spells doom for the city’s Kolis

Lives and livelihoods of the oldest inhabitants of Mumbai, the Kolis, have been drastically affected ever since the Coastal Road construction began. The ongoing infrastructural work has not only altered the familiar coastline of the city but also the way…

How adopting green measures made air more breathable

As all major cities across the world grapple with poor air quality, it becomes imperative to take responsibility and translate plans into action. A series of seminars and talks from local to national and international level on Climate Change ends…

Gandhinagar’s urban sprawl turns greenest city into a planned mess

Like the other planned cities, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar has veered away from the original master plan and developed into an urban jungle. The Sabarmati, on the banks of which the city was planned, is plagued by pollution with the renovation…

Vending zones add to Bhubaneswar’s beauty, but many wait for kiosks

Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar went on an overdrive to look spic and span for the ongoing International World Cup hockey tournament. As part of this, hawkers were removed from their traditional vending spaces and shifted to dedicated zones. Organising hawkers in…

A compendium on Chandigarh and Le Corbusier

How Chandigarh came to be built is a well-known story, one that scholars and urban planners revisit every now and then. What Chandigarh’s masterplan stands for, how much of it was realised, why its planner Le Corbusier imagined the Capitol…

India’s climate action planning needs ecological vision and social sensitivity

The National Action Plan on Climate Change of 2008 was criticised for lacking depth, vision, and urgency; these have not been addressed in the 2015 revision. There is concern on how individual development projects in cities conform to the climate…

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…

Planning and building gender-inclusive cities is the need of the hour

Women and other genders interact differently with the city from the way men do. What work they do, where they live, how they commute, and how they spend leisure hours are determined by what the city offers them – 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…