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Topic description / abstract:
Across the global South, cities are on a breakneck path to growth. Cities are engines of prosperity and promise, but also concentrations of pollution, stress, and disease. Episodes of flood, drought, heat waves, and smog tell us why we must begin to think ecologically about a new global urban future, which will be driven by cities of the global South. I draw on research from Bengaluru and other cities in India, to discuss how human populations have transformed the original ecology of the city beyond recognition. We cannot go back to the ecology of the past, but must instead look at the role that ecology plays in the lives of contemporary and future cities to collectively reimagine and redesign a better urban future.
Biographical note:
Harini Nagendra is Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. Over the past 25 years, she has been at the leading edge of research examining conservation in forests and cities of South Asia from the perspective of both landscape ecology and social justice. Her publications include the books “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: The Tree Book of Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019, with Seema Mundoli). She writes regular newspaper columns in the Deccan Herald and the Hindustan Times, and is a well known public speaker and writer on issues of urban sustainability in India.