About

Urban Inquiries Collective is a broad and evolving collaborative platform for political research and intervention in the conflicts and struggles that define urban society today. We seek to develop, support, and promote visionary ideas and liberatory practices for the autonomous organization of urban life. Presently members are involved in teaching, artistic, research, and activist work in Mumbai and other cities.

A related initiative, The Collective for Spatial Alternatives (CSA), is an association of urban researchers, academics, professionals and community organizers involved in spatial, economic, social and environmental research and planning. The Collective aims to provide critical analysis and technical support to community groups and neighbourhood organizations that are excluded and marginalized by the mainstream development process.

CSA members are committed to working together with other progressive groups and organizations to inform public policy, influence public opinion and elaborate and enable processes that assist urban residents to control and manage their own affairs.

We believe that planning has an important role in the distribution of resources and opportunity. It is indispensable as a means in the creation of an enabling environment for all people to exercise their collective agency, and to achieve their creative potential. We are therefore committed to the progressive tradition of planning, that strives towards the creation of an equal, free and sustainable society.

Members of CSA have been involved in community housing projects, ecological surveys and mapping, conservation and heritage management, local area plans, development control rules and built form codes, environmental management plans, urban policy and policy analysis, transport analysis and planning, slum up-gradation and development, among others.

Contact Urban Inquiries Collective at info@urbaninquiriescollective.org | Contact Collective for Spatial Alternatives at inquiry.csa@gmail.com