Who is a city actually built for?
About the Lecture
Public space is often described as neutral, open, accessible, equally available to all.
But everyday experience tells a different story.
Who sits comfortably in a park and who scans their surroundings. Who lingers and who rushes. Who takes up space and who shrinks. Who feels at home and who feels watched. These patterns are not incidental. They reflect deeper structures of power embedded in design, governance, and investment.
This lecture examines how cities are shaped not just by infrastructure, but by assumptions about whose presence is anticipated, and whose is treated as exceptional.
Drawing from fieldwork across Indian cities, including on-ground urban transformation projects in Ayodhya and research in Delhi, alongside global scholarship on gender-responsive planning, The aim of this lecture is not only to critique existing models, but to offer new ways of seeing, imagining, and building cities.
About the Speaker
Ruchita Bansal is an urban practitioner and researcher working at the intersection of public space, mobility, and gender in Indian cities. Her work explores how infrastructure decisions shape everyday urban experience, particularly for women and marginalised communities.
She has been closely involved in large-scale urban transformation initiatives, including façade improvement and public realm interventions in Ayodhya, working directly with planners, contractors, and local authorities to translate design vision into execution under complex, time-bound conditions.
Ruchita is also the founder of SheCity India, a platform documenting and analysing how women experience Indian cities. Through research, storytelling, public dialogue, and the Human City Podcast, she challenges the assumption that public space is neutral — arguing instead that cities mirror the values and power structures embedded within their systems.
About unLecture
unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephen’s, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an otherwise ordinary evening into a conversation you may think about long after it ends.
Where it is
Address : Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters | Panchsheel Park, Basement, Ground floor and First floor Building no. 12, Panchsheel Community Centre, Shahpur Jat, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi, Delhi 110017, India
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