Events

Hill, Forest, and a River: The Story of a City 

Speaker:

Shubham Mishra, PhD Candidate, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management, Faculty ITC, University of Twente, the Netherlands

Tuesday, 26th May 2026, 3:45 PM IST onwards.

This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online via Zoom. Please register below to attend.

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About the Talk
For more than a thousand years, Delhi has lived many lives. Cities have risen here, glittering with power and promise, only to fall to dust, and to rise again. Across this long arc of history, rivers shifted, ridges guided settlement, and tanks, canals, and baolis sustained urban life. While forts and palaces dominate our imagination, water, terrain, and the rhythms of the natural world have received far less attention in shaping the city’s landscape. This talk draws on nineteenth-century maps, photographs, and archival images to explore how these environmental patterns shaped the siting of Delhi’s pre-modern cities, and how their echoes still ripple through the modern metropolis at a time marked by droughts, floods, scarcity, and excess.

About the Speaker
Shubham Mishra is a PhD candidate at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management, Faculty ITC, University of Twente, the Netherlands. His doctoral work  focuses on building a Digital Twin of Shahjahanabad. His recent work includes www.wohdilli.in – a web-based GIS-portal that reconstructs mid-19th century Delhi. He has previously contributed to heritage and environmental planning projects, including mapping and designing a tree database for Sunder Nursery and the Humayun’s Tomb Complex for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). He has also provided planning and GIS expertise to organizations such as GIZ, the World Bank, CURE, FORCE, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), and SEEDS, working on themes related to sustainable urban habitats.