Housing Without Developers

  Last week Studio X Mumbai held a day long workshop provocatively titled “Housing without Developers”. As elaborated on their website, the workshop tried to challenge the seeming inevitability of Continue reading →

Gurgaon, Haryana, India

Gurgaon is Haryana’s largest city and is located 30 kilometers south of Delhi. Over the past 25 years the city has grown to become an icon of ‘urban India’. Most Continue reading →

Building Low Income Housing Markets

After a two hour train journey from Dadar station and a rickety ride in a private white shuttle van I was finally standing in front a construction site, picturesquely located Continue reading →

Novelizing Journalism

Every so often, a book about poor people captures the attention of large numbers of first-world readers. Journalist Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Continue reading →

Eco-Villages: Few thoughts

With increasing pressure on countries for reducing carbon emissions and building for climate resilience new practices and models of development are seen emerging. One of them, is the idea of ‘eco-villages’. Bringing Continue reading →

Jugaad

Pavement unit for two   Jugaad: A creative idea, a quick, alternate way of solving or fixing problems This is an interesting housing unit I saw on a pavement in my neighborhood. Continue reading →

Vertical City

After two years of writing from the outskirts, I am back in Mumbai, feeling a sense of being embedded and distant at the same time. Being back gives me a Continue reading →

Good Park, Bad Park

I would like pick up from Lubaina’s post on Green Washing Mumbai and discuss particular spatial typologies that are manifestations of Mumbai’s Bourgeois Environmental sensibilities. As Lubaina explains in her Continue reading →

Green-Washing Mumbai: Part 2

As described in my previous post, the Open-Mumbai exhibition demonstrated a plethora of possibilities of greening the city and programming unused or seemingly neglected areas of the city for ‘public Continue reading →

Green-Washing Mumbai: Part 1

Taking a slight segue from the general narrative on our blog, I would like to introduce an extremely interesting phenomenon that is currently taking shape in Mumbai- articulating the need Continue reading →

For “Bankability” (Part 3)

bank•a•ble, adjective banka’bility noun  1. Acceptable for processing by a bank: bankable checks and money orders. 2. Considered powerful, prestigious, or stable enough to ensure profitability. 3. Dependable or reliable: Continue reading →

Slumscapes

The title of this post is taken from a series of paintings by Jeff Gillette, a Southern-California-based mixed-media artist and painter. Gillette, in his artist’s statement, writes of his visits Continue reading →

For “Bankability” (Part 2)

bank•a•ble, adjective banka’bility noun  1. Acceptable for processing by a bank: bankable checks and money orders. 2. Considered powerful, prestigious, or stable enough to ensure profitability. 3. Dependable or reliable: Continue reading →

The Cycle of Evictions and Re-locations: PART 3

The previous posts (PART 1 and PART 2) laid out the context within which the spectacle of the Commonwealth games took place; however, the spectacular nature of evictions as well Continue reading →

For “Bankability” (Part 1)

bank•a•ble, adjective banka’bility noun  1. Acceptable for processing by a bank: bankable checks and money orders. 2. Considered powerful, prestigious, or stable enough to ensure profitability. 3. Dependable or reliable: Continue reading →

The Games and Beyond—Visions and Compromises: PART 2

See PART 1 The winning bid for the XIX Commonwealth Games quoted in 2003 was Rs. 1,899 crore (420 mi USD) for the successful planning and execution of the games. Continue reading →

Commonwealth Games 2010, New Delhi, India: PART 1

Urban and rural developments in India have heavily impacted the lives of the poor by facilitating economic growth and global competition, and in the bargain producing large populations of displaced Continue reading →

In retrospect

Adriana’s post reminds me of a project that we built as architecture undergrads in Mumbai. As a part of a short workshop conducted at KRVIA[1], we decided to build a Continue reading →

Are There Many “Informalities”? Reflections from my past work…

As part of a one-year research fellowship, at the Kamla Raheja Vidhyanidhi Institute for Architecture, I studied processes of urban development and land acquisition in Mumbai, through the academic year Continue reading →

Ways to Stay Put

By 2050, 55% of India’s population is expected to live in cities[1]. While it has been noted that the influx of people into cities shall create a high demand for Continue reading →