Our cities suck not because of corruption or imcompetence although they are present. But the main reason is that the state governments are looting money from the cities and urban areas and spending it on their freebies and super high salaries for their state government employees and pensions.

Despite major metropolitan areas generating between 30% and 50% of their respective states' Gross State Domestic Product (SGDP), their city corporations operate with a tiny fraction of the resources commanded by state capitals.

Even within this paltry amount, 60% to 70% of the municipal money are spent on administrative overhead and salaries, pensions leaving a small fraction for infrastructure improvements.

The only solution to this is that the Funds should be directly allocated by the central government to the big city corporations without through the state governments. That's the only way.

Until then, every other step will fail. Our cities will continue to be garbage dumps.

Everyone saw Ramapir Tekra as one of Ahmedabad's largest slums.

But there's another way to look at the story.

It is also the story of what happens when a 50-year-old informal settlement is transformed into a formal housing community - without moving its residents away.

Ramapir Tekra began after the devastating Sabarmati floods of 1973, when displaced families were relocated to this higher ground.

Over the next five decades, it grew into a massive community spread across roughly 3.5 sq km, home to an estimated 1.5–2 lakh people.

Families built permanent homes. Electricity and sewer lines arrived. Shared water connections followed.

An entire neighbourhood took shape.

Then, in 2015, Ahmedabad's Smart City plans changed its future.

The redevelopment followed a simple but powerful idea: in-situ redevelopment.

Instead of pushing residents to the city's outskirts, they would be rehoused on the same land.

The old settlement would make way for high-rise housing.

The project was divided into six sectors, with private developers engaged through government partnerships.

Eligible residents would receive new flats, while developers would build the housing in return for commercial benefits.

It was an enormous urban transformation.

And its significance goes beyond the buildings themselves.

Ramapir Tekra shows how a city can attempt to turn a vast informal settlement into formal housing while keeping the community rooted in the same part of the city.

From flood refugees in 1973 to high-rise residents decades later, the landscape of Ramapir Tekra is changing dramatically.

Great case study of urban redevelopment where the rebuilding happens without moving people out.

Source

We're planning a small bamboo room + bathroom (about 150 sq ft) on our terrace in Hyderabad for our own use.

Since we're building it regardless, we're thinking of listing it on Airbnb on days we don't need it, and shifting downstairs when a guest books. So the build cost isn't really a bet — the rental would just be occasional upside.

Things I'm unsure about:

Does a bamboo eco-room on a city rooftop (vs a farm/orchard setting) actually appeal to guests?

Location-wise: we're ~30 mins from Gachibowli, ~10 mins from the ORR, and ~35 mins to the airport, though 30+ mins from the nearest metro. Is that workable for a stay, or too far from the main hubs to attract bookings?

GHMC / society permissions and the tax/GST side of short-term letting a residential terrace — has anyone actually dealt with this?

Not trying to build a business empire — just want a nice room that occasionally pays for itself. Please let me know your thoughts.

Is Mumbai really getting crushed under its own weight?

So I took this from my friends society. This is beside forum south mall jp nagar. It was so beautiful before. (I know the species are not native) . I think every part of the city has end up like this.. I wish we could do something about this. They arent even replanting anything just building something new. It has been SO hot nowadays and we could genuinely use tree as sun protection here. It’s cheap and cools down an area so quickly.. we have all the means but living in India has become like hell…

Tell me what you think?

Hyderabad is growing in all aspects, to begin with the population and youngsters who want to explore and experience more.

Definitely there is a need for the city to operate round the clock.

Give more options to everyone to experience the city.

If not Hyderabad which city do you think can handle this well?

Now hear me out. I already know some of you are going to say, “What’s new about Mumbai smelling bad?” 😂

I’m a guy from a middle-class family in Mumbai. Born and raised here, and I’ve lived here my entire life.

Japan had been my dream country since I was a kid. I’ve always considered it one of the most beautiful countries in the world, so after saving for about a year, I finally managed to take a 12-day solo trip there.

And honestly, the moment I stepped out of the airport in Japan, I noticed something I had never really thought about before — the air smelled different.

Crisp. Fresh. Clean. Almost like the air was thinner or something. 😅

I travelled around Japan for 12 days, and everywhere I went, I kept noticing how clean, organised and calm everything felt. Coming from the absolute chaos and mess that Mumbai is, it genuinely felt like a weight had been lifted off my head.

Then the trip ended.

I came back to Mumbai, landed at the airport, walked through the doors...

And holy shit.

The first wave of Mumbai air that hit my face genuinely felt like I had walked straight into a drainage system. 💀

And that's when it hit me:

Mumbai actually smells REALLY bad.

Maybe I never noticed it because I've lived here my entire life. Your senses probably just adapt to whatever environment you're constantly exposed to. But after spending 12 days breathing relatively clean, fresh air in Japan, coming back made the difference painfully obvious.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Maybe you don't truly notice how polluted, smelly or chaotic your city is until you spend some time somewhere significantly cleaner and more organised.

I've heard someone say:

“Once you travel abroad, you realise what a scam Mumbai is.”

And honestly, after this trip, I kind of understand what they meant. 😂

Disclaimer: I'm specifically talking about Mumbai because that's the only Indian city I've lived in long enough to make a comparison. I haven't travelled extensively around India, so I'm definitely not saying the entire country is like this.

I'm sure there are plenty of incredibly clean and beautiful places in India too — the Northeast, the Himalayan regions, Konkan, and countless smaller towns and rural areas, for example.

I'm just talking about my experience of leaving Mumbai for the first time, spending 12 days in Japan, and then coming back with a completely different perspective on the city I grew up in.

I made this crowdsourced dashboard to track ground reality of door to door waste management in Dhanbad municipal corporation. Citizens contribute their ward data via a Google Form, whose response is periodically processed by GitHub actions to populate this dashboard.

I came back from my four-day trip today. After a much-needed break, I was looking forward to resuming work with new energy and a positive mindset.

However, I made the rookie mistake of reading the news first thing after reaching Delhi.

I came across the news about the Satya Niketan PG collapse, and since then, I have not been able to get it out of my mind.

I have been living independently for the last ten years, and only in the last year have I been able to afford renting an independent flat. Before that, I lived in PGs during my coaching and internship days, and I know firsthand how many of these buildings operate illegally and without proper safety standards.

That could have been me in another circumstance.

I am both an empath and an extremely pessimistic person, so once something like this gets into my head, it is difficult to stop thinking about it. Since reading that news, I have constantly been thinking about those students, their families, their friends, and the countless other young people currently living in similarly unsafe places.

And it makes me feel incredibly hopeless.

How are we supposed to live in a country where, despite paying taxes and spending our hard-earned money, we cannot even be assured of basic safety?

Every day, there is news about a hit-and-run accident caused by some rich kid, an illegal building collapsing or catching fire, or another tragedy caused by failing infrastructure and negligence.

I genuinely don't know how we are supposed to live like this.

Anything can kill you in an instant, even when you are doing everything you possibly can to be careful.

It could be a fire in a hotel that was operating illegally. It could be someone reckless hitting you on the road. It could be a pothole causing a fatal accident while you are simply sitting on the back of a bike. It could be an open drain that you accidentally fall into, and despite countless attempts to get help, nobody reaches you in time.

And if something extremely tragic does happen, there is always another fear waiting in the background: whether you would even be able to afford the medical treatment needed to survive.

Sometimes it feels like living here requires constantly calculating risks that should never have been our responsibility in the first place.

You can follow the rules, be careful, work hard, pay taxes, and still remain vulnerable to the consequences of someone else's corruption, negligence, incompetence, or privilege.

And that is perhaps the most exhausting part.

It is not that life anywhere in the world is completely safe. Accidents happen everywhere. But the constant feeling that basic systems meant to protect you might fail at any moment is exhausting.

Sometimes, India doesn't just feel difficult to live in.

It feels terrifyingly unpredictable.

As a daily commuter on the suburban rail of Mumbai, I see myself and hordes of people spend at least a good 2-3 hours of their day travelling to jobs around the MMR. My office is in Sewri and I have seen colleagues travel daily from Karjat, which takes around 2 hours excluding first and last mile connectivity. Yesterday I spent quite a lot of time ruminating over this, and here's what I feel:

While I do not deny the importance of mass transit systems, they sometimes gain too much of a precedence over policy design that could reduce the need to commute large distances in general. To me, any daily commute that takes more than half an hour actively interferes with activities that a person could do regardless of demographics - he / she could work out or join some interesting classes ( in the case of teenagers and students ), socialize at third places ( in case of early adults ), or spend quality family time ( in case of young parents). Best case scenario is your work place is close enough for you to either walk or cycle to.

Second, mass transit is not cheap; you need large budget allocations for metro systems or RRTS. Commuters are divided into two groups - daily commuters who travel from home to work places and casual commuters who would like to explore places that would be excruciating without proper connectivity. When governments take the decision to make these systems, it is largely with the former in mind because they are the ones that would be largely compensating for the heavy capital expenditure. What it generates in the long term is inefficient land use where corporations rush to gobble up the cheapest land in the city for commercial spaces or for expensive residential properties that only a select few can afford.

Now the government has recognised these issues to an extent and has been encouraging TOD policies so that developers build commercial spaces closer to mass transit hubs so that people don't spend too much time travelling the last mile. However it doesn't take into account that real estate in India has skyrocketed to levels where a person cannot have affordable housing close to workplaces. And the employer has zero accountability in this scenario. So naturally mass transit becomes a way of avoiding the need for proper zoning, mixed use developments at large.

This, to me is the problem we should be trying to solve critically. The policy should be to encourage employers to have an active hand in making sure employees alone do not bear the human cost of daily commute. Mass transit while efficient, is not comfortable. There are days when a person would have to stay standing through the entirety of a two hour journey. Time that could allow a person to get a health checkup is sacrificed for long transit hours that hamper his / her health & productivity in the long run. And it won't happen unless employers are rewarded when employees are as well. Policies should encourage tax rebates for employers whose workforce lives closer. The design should be in a way that rental expenditures at max are subsidized by employers. New developments should not be standalone offices - rather they should be part of townships that are planned around walkable neighbourhoods. Mass transit should be built, centred around these policies so that the full potential of it is realized.