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Introduction
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Humanity’s Urban Future
Introduction
The protean nature of rapidly evolving South Asian cities like Kolkata is best captured through an inter-disciplinary, multi-sectoral approach, one that considers the city’s architectural evolution and infrastructural developments, the opportunities for work, leisure, and consumption that it engenders, factors determining access to its resources and spaces, and its varied representations, over which there are continuous struggles and contestations. Such an approach is essential not only to understand how cities are made and re-made through time, and the socio-historical circumstances of this material and symbolic production, but also to imagine what the future of a city like Kolkata could look like.
For CIFAR’s ‘Humanity’s Urban Future’ project, the aim of the Calcutta Research Group has been, over the past year, to unpack, map, and critically analyse the dynamic and layered processes of urban developments and transformations in Kolkata and beyond. To this effect, a number of programmes have been undertaken:
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A series of eight public lectures titled
‘City Lights.’
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An online two-month certificate course on
‘Making and Unmaking of Cities.’
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The publication of two research reports: ‘Dream Deferred: Girl Child Education in post-Covid Kolkata’ by Poushali Basak and ‘Ecology, Extraction, City: The Making and Unmaking of Kolkata and Its Hinterland’ by Shatabdi Das, Samaresh Guchhait, and Ranabir Samaddar.
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A two-day conference on
‘City as the Southern Question’, the proceedings of which are currently being compiled into an edited book volume of the same name.
This year, the Calcutta Research Group has continued this work, through the following activities and initiatives:
1. Organizing a winter workshop titled ‘Cities, Migrants and Insecurities’ to be held from the 18th-22nd of November 2025, focusing on Kolkata’s migrant population, who power its economy, drive its growth, and sustain its socio-cultural institutions. Designed as a combination of online and offline segments, the workshop shall deliberate on questions of exploitation, exclusion, and vulnerability, by exploring the intersections of migration with gender, caste, class, and ecological and epidemiological crises. Since migration has a resounding impact on how cities are built and conceived, especially in India whose urbanisation is often touted to be “one of the biggest migration stories in the history of civilisation” (Lal, 2013), any attempt to study a city without developing an adequate understanding of the lives and experiences of its migrant population remains incomplete. Through discussions on migrants’ lives in the city, the workshop shall consider larger questions of inequality and marginalisation, conflict and violence, the politics of belonging, and the possibilities of imagining inclusive, sustainable futures for the city. The best two papers presented at this workshop will be awarded the
CIFAR-CRG Award 2025 for ‘Humanity’s Urban Future’.
2. Conducting an online certificate course on ‘Urban Futures in South and Southeast Asia’ in collaboration with the Center on Gender and Forced Displacement at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, to be held from January-March 2026. This course, based on the exploration of the multiple and contested futures of cities of the South, with their colonial legacies, uneven trajectories of decolonisation and development, and their new logistical and ecological entanglements, is set to engage with several registers of the urban future, including, but not limited to:
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The literary, artistic, and cultural imagination of a desirable city
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The political histories of subaltern classes and their demands for a humane and just urban order
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The experience of public disasters, whether climatic or epidemiological, and the solidarities of care and mutual protection that arise in response
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The visions of planners and administrators shaped by intergovernmental aid, investment, and public–private partnerships
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The presence of refugees, migrants, and outsiders whose contributions lend cities a plural and cosmopolitan character in tension with nativist claims
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The evolution of an urban economy in place of the industrial economy, and the central role played by informal economies and public finance in shaping these trajectories.
3. Compiling an edited book volume on Kolkata’s Urban Future – a selection of 6 reflective essays by scholars, journalists, doctors, and researchers affiliated with the CRG, examining:
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The literary, artistic, and cultural imagination about a desirable city
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The evolution of an ‘urban economy’ in place of an ‘industrial economy’ and the role played by informal economy and public finance
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Refugees, migrants, and aliens in a city lending it a cosmopolitan character
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A political history of the subaltern classes and their demands for a ‘humane’ and ‘just’ city, including an examination of political literature and manifestoes
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History of public disasters including climatic and epidemiological disasters and the role of urban solidarities (based on an ethos of mutual care and protection) in coping with such disasters
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Planners’ visions of the future of the city, linked with intergovernmental aid, investment, and public-private partnership
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