Urbanisation - Question of Cities

See the frayed symbiosis between Mumbai and its shrinking forests

The Adivasis living in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and Aarey Forest, given their deep relationship with the natural forest, struggle to make sense of the intruding city. Natural resources such as water are no longer theirs by right…

Blue green infrastructure: The commodification of nature

As climate change-related extreme events such as heat waves and unprecedented flooding become common, the concept of blue green infrastructure is catching on. It should have been about restoring natural ecology in a city – repairing and renewing watercourses, reviving…

Urgent heat conversations and actions we need in India to cool down cities

As millions of Indians struggle through an relentlessly scorching summer with never-before high temperatures, Heat Action Plans have become critical to people’s lives and livelihoods. Although states and cities have prepared plans – and some have fitfully implemented them –…

Trees: Nature’s canopies against scorched cities and heat waves

It’s known that trees are natural coolers amidst the concrete in our cities. This becomes critical when cities reel under heat waves as they have this summer. Abundant green cover helps to heat-proof cities while an absence of trees exacerbates…

Informal workers brave cruel heat for a few rupees a day

Outdoor and informal workers such as construction labourers, delivery drivers, hawkers and vendors are forced to brave the punishing heat to earn a few rupees a day. Their working conditions are deplorable, living conditions no better. As they bear the…

Heat-proofing cities: Green solutions that helped to cool them

As cities around the world warm up faster and heat waves become more frequent and intense, cities have gone beyond red heat alerts and action plans to cool themselves. Some of the on-ground initiatives to beat the heat range from…

Portraits of Bengaluru neighbourhoods struggling without water

The modest and low-income neighbourhood of Krishnaiyyanapalya in East Bengaluru exemplifies domestic life in the face of acute water shortage. With their one-hour-a-day supply from the Cauvery ebbing this year, residents are forced to rely on tankers and tractors. This…

For five pots of water a day, women of Vyasarpadi mortgage lives and health

Chennai’s water distribution network is lopsided. Its northern areas like Vyasarpadi, with poorer and backward caste households, are neglected. Here, women’s daily gruelling routines revolve around water. Older women, young working women, college and school-going girls queue up for water…

The best of QoC 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, it is customary to compile year-end lists of the work done throughout the year. At Question of Cities, we join the bandwagon not as an exercise in self-congratulation but more as a reflection of…

Festivals in cities, beyond celebrations, shape public place and identity

Cities are theatres of celebration of different kinds of festivals, from the traditional and religious to the contemporary and cultural. People congregate and celebrate, but the story of festivals in cities does not end there. Festivals help to shape –…