Seizing the Day for Southern Urbanism: Reflections from the Lockdown

Abstract

COVID-19 and the lockdown have challenged urbanists to rethink many of their core practices. As we return to a ‘new normal’, it is important to articulate responses to present challenges through the manner in which we have taught Southern urbanism over the last decade. One of the early lessons of Southern urban practice was that the field had to be our primary site of pedagogy. It is important, too, to recognise and value what this experience teaches us about theory, knowledge and practice. Over the last decade, I have been among a small band of urbanists in India and across the world who have been attempting to craft new learning and teaching contexts where experience and sensory perceptions are privileged but not at the expense of abstraction and concept building. As we witness uncertainty of an unprecedented degree, it is only through praxis and concept-forming informing each other that new theory will emerge. It will not emerge from any single source. This democratisation of practice is the single most important outcome of the last 3 months.