Positioning Urban Waters- Water Ecologies & Cities Day 2

“Un-Damning” Urban Water Flows! Finding a place for water ecologies in our city. The natural flows of water in our cities have been victim to the unplanned urban explosion. Our inability to accommodate rivers, water bodies and other ecological balances within our urban growth patterns has resulted in the increasing patterns of floods and droughts. […]

Increasing Urban Water Stress: Hiding Behind Climate Change?

Biggest concerns and challenges for South Asian countries’ economy, polity and society are falling or stagnant agricultural growth, rural-urban migration, swift industrialization process and unplanned and unregulated urbanization. The direct impact of these changes is the escalating demand for water for non-agricultural uses such as for industrial and urban water needs. As a consequence, millions […]

Learning from MGNREGA while designing an Urban Right to Work

The COVID 19 pandemic continues to be a serious public health issue and has had serious impacts on the lives and livelihoods of crores of people. As in most cases, those most affected include workers, agricultural labour, small and marginal farmers, old age pensioners, widows, the differently abled, slum dwellers, the homeless and other such […]

Making Cities Water Secure

Water is the most important resource for human settlements, cross-cutting all social, economic and environmental activities. History teaches us that many civilizations were wiped out due to water scarcity. With climate change and resultant uncertain weather patterns, cities have become even more susceptible to water scarcity than ever before. The global community has also recognized […]

Sustainable Mobility Fortnight- Cities, People and Sustainable Mobility

The desired transformation of the mobility sector will be robust and just if it is accompanied by a process of enhancing public understanding about mobility and sustainability, and public engagement to evolve locale-specific sustainable solutions. The discussion, also drawing on the references to public awareness and the role of the public in the earlier webinars, […]

Sustainable Mobility Fortnight- BRTS: The unfinished Agenda

The webinar will be focused on the learnings from the BRT systems in Indian cities, current status and the future of the BRTS in India.  Fifteen years ago, with the JnNURM and NUTP, many cities looked at BRTS as a viable option for a mass and rapid transit system. The period from 2005 to 2010 […]

Sustainable Mobility Fortnight- Where is my bus?

  Programme Coordinator (Urban), CEE, Pune   The webinar will be focused on the need to improve the bus based public transport in Indian cities. Irrespective of the benchmark of 50 buses per lakh population – set up by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MOHUA) – most of our cities do not even […]

Sustainable Mobility Fortnight- Transform budget to transform Transport

Though most decision-making authorities believe in the need to promote walking, cycling and public transport, the investments in transport infrastructure indicate different trends. The transport investments are heavily skewed towards building private motor vehicle infrastructure. Sadly, it is true for all the three tiers – the national, state as well as urban local body’s budgets.  […]

Gandhi and Cities

Ram Guha writes — This is my essay on Geddes and India  https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/making-indian-cities-habitable   It is counter-intuitive to think of M K Gandhi and City. In fact the category ‘Urban’ does not occur in the Subject Index of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi and the small entry on ‘Cities/ Towns’ is dominated by ‘exploitation […]

Urbanisation and Technology

Urbanisation and Technology brings together three eminent persons with deep domain knowledge on technology applications, economic and urban development.  Sam Pitroda, entrepreneur and visionary needs no introduction.  He has been widely recognized as the person who introduced India into the digital age in the 1980s through his influence on the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.  […]