Out of the shade

Joshi illustrated how Indian architecture always built with trees. “We have always lived in the shade, not too inside nor too outside, it’s the in-between space. And now we don’t know about in-between spaces. In the East Kidwai Nagar project, the spaces are precise between inside and outside. It’s the post-war Soviet idea of a building taken many floors higher and mixed with cars,” he said.

Roy, who has been championing the idea of “peoples’ cities”, questioned why there was an acute shortage of housing. “Figures from previous Master Plans of Delhi, from 1982 to 2001, say that Delhi Development Authority was supposed to build 16.3 lakh houses, however they built only about a third. In the 2021 Master Plan, 25 lakh houses are meant to be built, though only two lakh have been built so far,” he said.

Krishen pointed to the lack of understanding of native planting among authorities, including the Forest Department and the Central Public Works Department. He called the idea of replanting trees a hoax, and said, “We have close to 2590 species of native trees in the country, but we cultivate only about 60-70 of them. An oddball might bring the figure up to about 120-130 trees, which means we are working with less than four per cent of trees.”

While Prof Ravindran shared the finer nuances of Floor Area Ratio and government policies, Kohli spoke of how these government housing projects have legalised land-grabbing of public property.