CITY FOR ALL?

Our interaction with urban planning ends up putting women, queer folks and the marginalized at a disadvantage. City For All? will make you question the design, planning and architecture of cities and built spaces in India from the intersectional lens of gender, age, ability, class and caste.

Date & Time	7th -8th May, 2022 | 11 am – 7 pm
Venue	Bikaner House, Pandara Road, India Gate, ND – 11
How to join?	◉ Free viewing, open to all ◉ Please carry your photo ID proof ◉ Covid-19 protocol

Let’s take a quick quiz! Did you walk the streets past midnight? Sat at a roadside stall and had tea? Found a toilet to pee when you needed one? Took a bus without fear of harassment? Laid down in a park and took a nap?

If the majority of your answers are ‘yes’, there is a high chance you are an able-bodied cis-man hailing from a dominant caste and religion.

Public spaces and their access are not gender-neutral. Look around and you will realise that they are mostly occupied by fully grown, able-bodied, upper caste, young cis-gendered heterosexual men, who feel free, powerful and in control of these spaces.

The project will travel across 36 diverse neighbourhoods across 6 cities in India in order to map the communities’ response to their immediate public spaces. Every map will bring out city-level patterns on how we use our public spaces based on our gender, age and abilities as well as the local diversity of economic background, class and caste.

A final exhibition will showcase the maps, with discourses, dialogues, public debates and curated walks in each city attempting to give visibility to a much-needed question: who builds our cities, and for whom?

Swati Janu is an architect and artist who works on issues of right to the city, participatory planning and inclusive public spaces. She is the Founder of the interdisciplinary practice Social Design Collaborative which was recently awarded the Beazley Design of the Year 2020 in Architecture.

Her approach combines community engagement and grassroots activism with policy advocacy. She was nominated as one of the 15 Young Leaders from India in 2018 for her work in humanitarian architecture. She is currently a Domestic Expert on the CITIIS project led by AFD and NIUA.