URBAN PLANNING

A new Mayor and Council are in place at Ripon Buildings. And in keeping with that there is plenty of hope. The Worshipful Mayor, in keeping with the ideology of her party, has resurrected the Singara Chennai slogan. A new plan had earlier been unveiled by the Chief Minister under the name Singara Chennai 2.0. There is no doubt that the Mayor and Council will focus on making that vision a reality, given that she is from the same political party. And there is no doubt the opposition will protest, chiefly because it is the ruling party’s idea. The interests…

Urban planning experts and allied interests have for long grappled with exactly how much open space Mumbai needs, and what more can be done to improve Mumbai’s natural environment. Given the likely impacts of climate change, especially in the context of the latest IPCC report warning the city of climate change catastrophes, urban planning in Mumbai appears to have reached a critical point of inquiry.  Extensive research already outlines Mumbai’s open space deficit as an outcome of administrative disputes, land availability, acquisition financing, lack of holistic policy implementation, and other reasons across social, economic and environmental aspects. While the search…

Seema* has been living in the G Block, colloquially known as Paras colony, of Aya Nagar for more than seven years now. Having migrated from Uttar Pradesh in search of better employment opportunities, she and her husband had only one dream, like any other migrant - to buy their own house in the locality. “My husband and I work very hard and have always dreamt of having a house of our own.”  However, little did she know that just a year after she bought the land in Aya Nagar from a local Gurjar, the front yard of her house would…

‘Decoding Everyday’ is a citizen science portal which invites contributions from individual residents, student communities, RWA members and anyone interested to share their experiences and stories about streets and public spaces in cities. It is an initiative of the Bangalore-based Everyday City Lab (ECL) that was recently selected to be a part of the Citizen Innovation Lab’s (CIL) ‘Six-week Sprint’ within its Civic Tech program. Under this program, CIL supports initiatives to develop technologies that enable citizens to engage with the government and/or communities to work towards civic participation in governance. The Everyday City Lab recently launched a series of…

Cities are drivers of economic growth in any country. They start attracting people as they develop economically. Cities also play an important support role in the development of the rural hinterland. In the past few decades, the Indian economy has grown rapidly which shows the high population growth in urban areas in India.  However, this rapid growth has not been managed very well and urban India is increasingly seeing problems such as, inadequate infrastructure for the growing population, poor service delivery, pollution, poor health care, housing, irregular elections and other issues that continue to impede cities across India from achieving…

As Uttarakhand gets set to elect a new state government, we bring you the first of a two-part series on the state’s urban development challenges and possible solutions Uttarakhand faces a major challenge to develop its cities and towns. In the coming years, urban pressures will increase manifold due to the upcoming Delhi-Dehradun economic corridor, the Char Dham all-weather road and other central projects. To prepare its cities and towns to face these challenges, political parties need to have manifestos and visions that include relevant and sustainable components of urbanization. Uttarakhand is one of the fastest urbanizing states in India.…

Last year, Chennai experienced intense rains and flooding yet again, bringing the city to a standstill for days. Excess flooding in the city has been associated with poor planning and urban development projects over the years. Rapid urbanisation in erstwhile agricultural lands and wetlands, and increased concretisation have altered the natural flow of rainwater. This is what has often led to debilitating floods.  Existing infrastructure to manage flooding has been criticised by city dwellers and environmentalists for incomplete construction, lack of topographic study before implementation, and lack of linking drains to natural channels.  A growing concern is the fact that…

On January 27th, Citizen Matters hosted a webinar on the state of urban planning in Mumbai to address discrepancies in the city's socio-economic, infrastructure and environmental planning. Moderated by Meenakshi Ramesh, Trustee of Citizen Matters, the panel consisted of people from backgrounds of architecture, urban planning, anthropology and education. The panelists were Rejeet Mathews, program director for urban development at WRI India, Aslam Saiyad, a photographer and documentarian deeply interested in issues related to riparian communities in Mumbai, Akhtar Chauhan, former director of Rizvi College of Infrastructure, Berjis Driver, an urban planner and associate member of the Institute of Town…

With intense spells of rain over the past month, there has been widespread flooding in Chennai. Areas such as T. Nagar, Guduvanchery and K K Nagar are among the many localities that experienced extreme waterlogging. Residents raised their concerns and requests to the civic body on social media by posting photos of water-stagnation and the damage caused by it.  Care Earth Trust, a city-based environmental organisation, saw here a need for better information at the ground-level for proper flood mitigation measures. And this information needed to be sourced from citizens themselves. Seeing as many in the city were taking to…

The torrential rains that hit Tamil Nadu’s state capital of Chennai in November this year is said to be the heaviest since the downpour in 2015 which caused massive floods in the city. The rains that lashed Chennai this time around following the festival of Diwali have also led to water logging and inundation in several areas such as T Nagar, Adyar, Velachery, Pulianthope and other places.  In the backdrop of the severe problems faced by residents of Chennai due to the heavy downpour, Citizen Matters Chennai organised an online panel discussion on November 17th (for full video, check below),…