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Week 3 Of ESG Imaginaries To Make Cities Work: Mobility & Infrastructure

ESG has worked with street communities to reclaim streets as public commons, to protect street vendor rights, to promote pedestrian and cycling rights, to secure urban greenery – especially tree lines and heritage spaces, all to promote the idea of a  city that would ensure inclusivity is central to such public spaces and infrastructure. The argument has been and continues to be that there must be deep democratisation of decision making relating to mobility and infrastructure development so that the promise of Article 39 B – that ownership and employment of material resources best serve the  common good – is actually an argument for  protecting commons, ensuring good health, promoting environmentally viable and equitable livelihoods, and ensuring the city is a construct that is socially responsible, economically viable and ecologically wise.  

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ESG Imaginaries to Make Cities WorkWebinars
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Week 2 of ESG Imaginaries to Make Cities Work: Challenges of Securing Urban Commons

ESG has worked with this problematique of the commons and demonstrated how securing them can be a win-win for all. Working with communities to resist privatisation of commons, such as lakes, and then asking for a policy to protect them with Public Trust Doctrine and the principle of intergenerational equity  as the basis, has resulted in path breaking outcomes – rehabilitation of lakes as inclusive commons and as sacred spaces that deserve community and statutory protection to advance ecological and water security. 

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ESG Imaginaries to Make Cities WorkUrban GovernanceWaste ManagementWebinars
Admin ESG

Week 1 of ESG Imaginaries To Make Cities Work: Waste And Governance

For over two decades, ESG has focussed on the emerging urban environmental and socio-economic challenges and has been working with multiple communities, government agencies, academia, media, etc. The approach has always been about finding viable and inclusive solutions to vexatious problems advocating deeply democratic processes that draw on  intersectoral, interdisciplinary, intersectional experiences, knowledge and histories. Bangalore and other cities today are in a mess as they follow highly centralised governance approaches that drift from existing legal provisions in which the various local publics find no place to imagine their futures as part of a collective imagining of the city’s future.

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AdvocacyCOVID-19 PandemicDisaster Management, Relief & RehabilitationESG Opinion
ESG Author

COVID-19: Why we must reorganise cities to deal with the third wave

There have been innumerable efforts in the past by civil society, trade unions, academia, public health experts and others who repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of strengthening local governance as key to mitigating and managing problems. These efforts have reached various High Courts and the Supreme Court too as Public Interest Litigations, trying to make local governance work. But the hubristic reliance and faith in centralised management has been such that even court orders directing public involvement in decision-making have all been disregarded. The whims and fancies of a few in power have prevailed with technology-based solutions for the pandemic.

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CampaignsESG Workshop ReportsSmart CitiesUrban Governance
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Interrogating Governance and Financial Implications of ‘Smart Cities’ – Part I Report

In collaboration with Program on Science, Technology and Society, Harvard Kennedy School, USA & Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Germany, as part of a project on Governance of Sociotechnical Transformation in this interrogating discussion on Governance and Financial Implications of ‘Smart Cities’.

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Advisors Dr. T.B Dinesh is the Founder and technology Director of Servelots (1999), which develops cost-effective open source solutions and

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Admin ESG

Highlights of 2023!  

As another year comes to an end, it is only appropriate to look back and reflect on all that has happened this past eventful year. 2023 has been a special year for ESG as it marks 25 years of the organisation’s efforts in securing environmental and social justice for all! ESG has worked with a range of marginalised and vulnerable groups across India in the past 25 years, and has been in the forefront of struggles to secure voiceless ecosystems from ruin. 

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Admin ESG

Workshop on Urban Infrastructure in a Changing Climate

While Bangalore is being refashioned into a “world class” metropolis, urban commons are often destroyed. exacerbating the looming impacts of climate change.

Join us in exploring the interplay between climate change and urban-infra projects through a screening of ‘Our Metropolis’, a film by Gautam Sonti & Usha Rao, followed by discussions on Namma Metro.

The workshop will help understand how decisions are made? Who makes the decisions? Who benefits and who loses? The making of the film and what it entails? The work shop will include appreciating the legal provisions that govern the mega infrastructure in cities,  the judicial interventions and local efforts through case studies to ensure a city builds infrastructure that is climate resilient and truly inclusive.

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