Urban Design

No country for playful children: Why Indian cities need to get serious about play time

Until spaces are designated for children — including those who live on the streets or in urban slums — to play, menacing places like railway tracks or riverbeds will continue to serve as playgrounds.

How to build a queer city: Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru could take a cue from mid-19th century Berlin

In India, where Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalises gay sex, a thwarted community has managed to survive, protest with a song and dance, throw parties, and crawl under the sheets whenever it pleases

Open spaces in Indian cities must be viewed as essential community resources, not a luxury

Open or public spaces — a city’s streets, parks, waterfronts, squares, maidans, chowks — are necessary breathers which provide vibrant locations for public encounter, and facilitate a civic culture

Could emulating China's 'sponge cities' help prevent the worst of flooding in urban India?

Cities in India, with their impermeable surfaces, blocked drains, and rampant construction on lake beds and other water bodies, have metamorphosed into water-resistant barriers, prone to flooding.

Elphinstone Bridge stampede is a reminder of role good urban design can play in averting tragedies

Footbridges in India, often hastily-constructed passages of narrow proportions and tacky design, evoke nether awe or oration | #ByDesign | #FWeekend

On Rabindra Jayanti, a plea for recovering our civilisational inheritance

Rabindranath Tagore has his uses, other than making us stand as one of his songs is sung.

MIT releases software to help cities get better not just bigger

Most of the world now lives in cities, but that doesn't mean that cities are great places to live. MIT has released a new open-source urban planning toolbox that it hopes will mean cities are just larger but also more liveable.

MIT releases software to help cities get better not just bigger

Most of the world now lives in cities, but that doesn't mean that cities are great places to live. MIT has released a new open-source urban planning toolbox that it hopes will mean cities are just larger but also more liveable.