Tag: Urbanization
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Disciplining Non-human Bodies in the City
Aditi Dhillon & Ajay Immanuel Gonji In his seminal essay Why Look at Animals? John Berger (2009) talks about how, in the past, people kept domestic animals because they were useful to them – as guard dogs, hunting dogs, mice-killing cats, and so on. Later, people began to keep animals regardless of their usefulness, a…
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Life in the Fastlane: Roadkill in the Anthropocene
Ajay Immanuel Gonji My first close encounter with roadkill was during fieldwork for my Master’s internship, way back in 2013. I remember seeing the bloated body of a large male nilgai, fully intact, on the footpath of the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg – a 6-lane highway bifurcating the Sanjay Van city forest and the Jawaharlal…
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WATER QUALITY OF THE YAMUNA RIVER DURING THE FIRST LOCKDOWN
Divya Mehra and Shiwani The Coronavirus pandemic which has affected almost every part of the world is considered to be the biggest economic and health crisis of the present time. To contain the spread of the Covid-19 disease, in the initial phases of the pandemic, many countries went into lockdown, resulting in the temporary suspension…
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Exploring the Behaviour of Urban Wildlife
Ajay Immanuel Gonji For many of us, our first encounter with animals was probably at home with cats and dogs, or on the streets with cows, chickens and so on. These creatures may be called ‘domestic’ because their lifeworlds almost entirely revolve around human beings. On the other hand are creatures that are collectively referred…
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Whose City? Whose Commons?: Urbanization and the fate of (Peri) Urban Commons in India
Factors such as urbanization have led to the depletion of Common Property Resources, affecting the livelihoods of many who depend on them for sustenance. Kartik Chugh(Research Intern, CUES-TIGR2ESS) The demise of CPRs Common property resources (CPRs) can be understood as natural resources of a community where every member has access and non-exclusive property/usage rights to…
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Theorising Peri-Urban: Moving towards a Political Ecology Perspective
Kartik Chugh A review of the literature suggests that there is no consensus on a single definition of the word “peri-urban”. Different authors have defined the peri-urban according to their needs and scope of work. However, they all agree that peri-urban is an area situated at the periphery of a city, having attributes of both…
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A Short Introduction to Urban Ecology
Ajay Immanuel Gonji According to McDonnell (2011), the discipline of ecology came into the picture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and was defined as the scientific study of the abundance and distribution of organisms, and the interaction between each other and also the environment. In this newly developing field of ecology, human…
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Plight of Granivorous Birds in Urban Landscapes
Shashank Bhardwaj Introduction When people talk about House Sparrow, it reminds me of my vivid childhood memories in Delhi. I remember sitting with my mother in the open veranda in the scorching heat of summer, helping her with household chores like cleaning, and storing wheat grains. At times, my mother would get occupied with other…
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Adaptability of Wetland Birds to Changing Landscapes
Himanshu Choudhery The advent of the industrial revolution paved the way for massive industries and settlements to be set up in new areas, that we now call cities and towns. Due to this, a large number of people from rural areas have settled down in cities in search for employment and a ‘better life’. As…
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Urban Development at the Cost of Rural Exploitation
Vipin Kumar In India, technological advances, improvements in health services, development of better academic institutes, and massive scale of industrialization has caused the en masse movement of people from rural to urban areas. Large-scale urban development through the construction of residential complexes, hospitals, educational institutions, commercial complexes, parking lots, roads, service lanes, parks and gardens,…
Centre for Urban Ecology and Sustainability 