The Delhi Urban Platform invites you for its Opening session:

The Image of the City

CSDS library
29 Rajpur Road
Civil Lines

19th February 2010
4:00 P.M.

Ravi Sundaram
Narayani Gupta
Amita Baviskar
AGK Menon
Awadhendra Sharan
Gautam Bhan

The inaugural event of the Delhi Urban Platform is an open discussion on the city of Delhi, and possible future conversations.

The Delhi Platform is a networked constellation of events and discussions on various themes  that affect the city of Delhi. The Platform is a collaborative process involving diverse institutions and individuals, who have a stake in the futures of the city. The Platform was begun as a response to the lack of a critical public discussion on Delhi's urbanity and urban life.

Tracing its history back almost a millennia, standing on the ruins of older and new empires, Delhi’s urban heritage is unmatched in the subcontinent. Yet Delhi’s 20th century has been one where the city has  increasingly lost its urban imagination. This is a process that some trace back to the defeat of 1857, the slow marginalization of the Old city and ultimately, the trauma of Partition in 1947.  Delhi often appeares as a curious paradox -  a historic city, but without a consciousness of itself, without an identity.

In the last decade, however, Delhi's residents have become acutely aware of the crises of the city's urbanism. Urban debates are now the flesh of Delhi’s life, the headlines to our morning coffee. We have witnessed public quarrels over infrastructure, pollution, speeding buses, displacement of the poor, heritage, sealing, the list goes on... An urban discourse has emerged, as witnessed in rapid interest in reporting on the city in papers and media, and scores of online platforms on Delhi. This public debate is raw, confused, provocative, often half-baked - but it is here to stay. The coming Commonwealth Games has put   spotlight on all the city’s problems, critical engagement with our present is more urgent than ever.

Delhi deserves better. It is important to create new sites of critical, independent urban discourse – that can provide open platforms on all themes affecting the city. The Delhi Platform is thus intended as an open forum that travels to different parts of the city in the coming months, leading up to the Commonwealth Games and beyond the event. The platform is a collaboration between different institutions  and individuals interested in Delhi’s urbanism. The platforms will involve people from all walks of life: scholars, practitioners, activists, writers, artists, ordinary citizens in a critical conversation about Delhi's urban futures.

The Platform website is under construction, and will be live by the end of this week. Visit: www.delhiurbanplatform.org

The Delhi Urban Platform is on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=304722899371&ref=mf