What if in-town big box stores encourage people to drive less? That is, after all, a major policy objective of smart growth. Plenty of people who don’t want a big box store in their midst still drive 20 miles to get to one. Why not cut out those unnecessary emissions? And if you could go to a Sam’s Club once a month instead of a Safeway every week, wouldn’t that get people out of their cars more, too?

These neighbourhoods are hives of building activity. The houses here have long passed the hutment stage and are now as pucca as your own homes, albeit in constrained conditions. Unlike most flat owners (this means you), these homes occupy a plot on the ground and rise to a height that will not get them in trouble with the BMC. They are built in RCC and brick masonry, finished with ceramic tiles, both inside and outside, are clean and largely maintenance-free. They have electricity and piped water running to their kitchens and toilets. This is clearly seen by the miles of running pipes over ground, on both sides of the streets. The roads outside their homes are paved with interlocking tiles, just like any other part of the city.

Despite this, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) chooses to name these localities as ‘difficult’ areas, and damn them to the eternal hell of rehabilitation.

"We have a global icon in our backyard. The first thing people want to do when they get here is see the sign. And we're going to tell them we can't deal with them?" said Fran Reichenbach, president of the association. "We're battling elitism and a self-serving mentality we think is inappropriate."

"Jugaad" is a Hindi term referring to the ingenuity of citizens living in resource-constrained environments, a concept from which New Yorkers might derive some enlightenment. Enter Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for Indian Cities, an exhibition created with the help of curator Kanu Agrawal that opens at New York's Center for Architecture next week.
The exhibition is "design by the people, for the people, of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Pune," says Agrawal, and showcases everyday innovations of slum-dwelling residents and the designers and architects who work around them.

At the center of the debate is a proposed amendment to the city code which would allow residents to keep no more than four chickens in an enclosed backyard coop. Not allowed under the proposal: roosters, slaughtering of animals, or apartment-dwelling chickens.

New Orleans is full of vacant storefronts and people who need things. My neighborhood is still without a full-service grocery store. So I made these fill-in-the-blank stickers to provide an easy tool to voice what we want, where we want it. Just fill them out and put them on abandoned buildings and beyond. The stickers are custom vinyl and can be easily removed without damaging property. It’s a fun, low-barrier tool for citizens to provide civic input on-site, and the responses reflect the hopes, dreams, and colorful imaginations of different neighborhoods.

Hamburg's new quarter is one of the largest urban development projects underway in the world today. But will it be successful? City planners are hoping that their application of an academic field known as environmental psychology will do the trick.