Image: Fusionopolis, one of the newest indoor entertainment mall of Singapore.
Public spaces are sacrosanct in urban planning rhetoric and embody a range of virtues—from the community to the commons, from equality to inclusive citizenship. What constitutes a public space, however, is often a point of contention
Shopping malls, plazas, sidewalks, parks, museums, pedestrian pathways, flea markets, [...]

Neha Thirani writes about URBZ fellow Edward Birnbaum’s research on religious sites in Dharavi. More coming soon on that topic. To download the article in high resolution click here.

We spent most of last week in Ahmedabad, the dynamic capital of Gujarat, which is developing just as fast as any other major Indian city today. In spite of the wide availability of land, real estate prices are shooting up in most parts due to the speculative bubble that is currently affecting India and boosting [...]

From managing displaced people during Delhi’s biggest urban resettlement program – the partition of the Indian subcontinent in  1947- to routinely displacing its workers and citizens in the name of beautification, development projects or pure spectacle, India’s capital city has a poor track record of humane urban administration.
Sawda-Ghevra, a resettlement colony for erstwhile jhuggi-jhopdi (poor [...]