Wetlands - Question of Cities

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…

From St. Inez Creek to Goa’s stories of water systems

The short film, Avnati, tells the story of the degradation of the St. Inez Creek that flows through Panaji through the lives and memories of people around it. From an idyllic place where people recall floating paper boats, the water…

Watching over the water of our lakes and wetlands

Thane and Navi Mumbai, old and new cities respectively which are often overshadowed by Mumbai, have seen their ecological abundance of rivers, creeks, wetlands, hills and forests threatened by ‘development’ plans and infrastructure projects. Professionals, environmentalists, architects, traditional communities like…

Mithi: More than a rainwater drain for Mumbai but tell that to the authorities

The quiet Mithi River turned hostile on July 26, 2005, flooding the city in the record 944 millimetres rainfall that day. Pinched and bent in places, narrowed by encroachments, treated like a sewage stream, the Mithi became the focus of…

Reimagining Mumbai: From flood-prone to sponge city

Over the years, reckless development has destroyed the city’s ecology, increasing the risk of floods. Mumbai’s lakes, marshes, and salt pans used to absorb monsoon rains and mitigate floods but they have been built upon or covered with concrete. As…

Climate disasters are connected to the way our cities are planned

Cities have completely ignored their natural areas. If mapped and made available on a public database, people can be empowered with the knowledge about them and can decide to protect them. Mapping a city’s ecology can radically change the way…

How Navi Mumbai developed into an urban jungle edging out nature

The planned satellite city on the outskirts of the oversaturated Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, was built from scratch. Its landscape was once an ecologically-rich rural one with hill ranges, dozens of wetlands, creeks and intertidal areas, tropical semi-evergreen and deciduous vegetation,…

Make space for rivers in cities, draft policies to protect them

Natural rivers and their ecosystems in cities are being ruined in the name of development with projects stripping away them of their ecology, changing their geographical features, and leave a lasting damage on the marine life as well on people…

Water in the city: A matter of ecology, public health, and livelihoods

The importance of wetlands and waterbodies in urban planning has come to the fore after the devastating floods in India’s Bengaluru. They absorb and distribute rainwater and the runoff. As the sceptre of capitalist growth continues to affect the waterbodies,…

‘We need to plan cities for extremes. Climate Change is all about extremes’

The torrential rain and floods in Bengaluru in early September grabbed international attention, showing up wide cracks in the basic infrastructure of the ‘IT capital of India’. Tractors rescued the better off people to safety, the less privileged were left…