The event will be held in hybrid mode at CPR Delhi & Zoom

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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, emperors, sultans, and dynasties kept returning to the same stretch of land, convinced that this was the place from which they could shape the world.

But what was it that drew ruler after ruler back to this landscape?

The answer, I suggest, lies not only in the grand forts and palaces that dominate our imagination, but in the quieter, more elusive forces that shaped Delhi long before the first stone was laid. Forces like water, terrain, and the subtle rhythms of the natural world—elements that rarely announce themselves and yet leave unmistakable traces for those who know where to look.

In this talk, we will journey through 19th‑century maps, photographs, and archival images, using them as windows into a Delhi where rivers shifted, ridges guided settlement, and tanks, canals, and baolis sustained settlements. We will explore how these environmental patterns shaped the siting of each pre‑modern city, and how their echoes still ripple through the modern metropolis.

The talk will conclude at present, because Delhi today—like so many Indian cities—finds itself trapped in a cycle of droughts and floods, of scarcity and excess. What if the clues to breaking this cycle lie hidden in our own urban past? What if the landscapes that once sustained Delhi’s many cities still hold lessons for the one we inhabit now?

Speaker:

Shubham Mishra is an urban planner trained at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi, and the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, the Netherlands. He holds a Master’s degree in Geography from the University of Delhi. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management, at Faculty ITC, University of Twente, the Netherlands, where his research focuses on building a Digital Twin of Shahjahanabad.

His broader academic interest lies in exploring built and natural landscapes to connect contemporary urban form with its historical layers. His recent work includes www.wohdilli.in – a web-based GIS-portal that reconstructs mid-19^th century Delhi. At the Centre de Sceince Humaines (CSH), he has extended this effort by mapping place names referenced in classical Persian and Urdu texts on the city.  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, CSE, and SEEDS, working on themes related to sustainable urban habitats.

His engagement with Delhi’s cultural history extends to translation as well. He has translated two Urdu works into Hindi: Intizar Hussain’s Dilli tha Jiska Naam and Rajendra Lal Handa’s Dilli jo ek Shahr Tha. Shubham plans to continue exploring how digital technologies can be used to visually represent the multiple narratives—historical, cultural, and spatial—that shape urban environments.

This is the one hundred and ninty five (195) in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi, and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on the city’s development issues and address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Rama Devi at ramadevi2487@gmail.com, Champaka Rajagopal at champaka@cprindia.org or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org.