Bits of our Indian Cities

We've been in India, setting up a couple of projects, visiting people and places, and wandering the urban landscape. Alongside this, we are capturing some bits that are super relevant to our Elastic Cities / App-ocalypse work. A quick glimpse: In Mumbai, we visited the Urbz HQ, in the heart of Dharavi's New Transit Camp at Dharavi, most famous as the home of Slumdog Millionaire. We were fortunate to spend an afternoon with Matthias, his crew and their two visitors, both human rights lawyers who were grappling with the complexities of Dharavi's legal battles around land, ownership and displacement. View from the Urbz office. While URBZ is located within Dharavi, a lot of their work addresses the wider implications of living in cities that are 'in-formation'. We glimpsed echoes of Urbz's strategy in KB Jain's paper, that was presented at the Healthy Cities Conference: And just the other day we chanced upon this glitzy-ubertech-bollywood-radio-cafe-autorickshaw! Decked up to service you with all kinds mobile chargers, Japanese solar-powered toy flowers, magazine and newspaper racks, LCD screens blaring the latest Bollywood film, Gods and Goddesses for your workship, CDs for you to select a tune of your choice, and a rather shiny handle bar. A vehicle in-formation, growing and changing according to its occupants and environment, much like our cities.