Studio POD

The best site is the one already there.
In planning theory, there is a distinction between tabula rasa urbanism — designing from a blank slate — and what Jane Jacobs described as working with the existing 'intricate ballet' of urban life.

Repositioning is a distinct design discipline. It asks: given what a place has already become — its movement patterns, its informal economies, its social geography — how do you insert new spatial energy without erasing what works?

At Shantigram in Ahmedabad, the last 100 acres of a 500-acre township gave us exactly this opportunity. Midtown Park wasn't designed as a standalone amenity. It was designed as a catalyst — a piece of public realm that restructures the legibility of the entire township around it. Catalytic urbanism: the idea that strategically placed public investments can shift the character of an entire area.

Adaptive repositioning is not glamorous work. It is some of the most consequential urban design work that exists.

Which township in your city needs a second chapter?

Photography: Umang Shah
Location: Shantigram, Ahmedabad
Client: Adani Realty

Water has somewhere to go :

Ian McHarg argued in 1969 that design should follow nature's logic, not override it. Fifty years later, most Indian cities are still building and over engineering concrete drains.

Water Sensitive Urban Design ( WSUD ) is the framework that operationalises this. Treat water as a resource to be managed through the landscape, not a problem discharged into pipes. Bioswales slow and filter runoff. Retention parks absorb peak monsoon flows. Permeable surfaces recharge aquifers. The landscape does the hydraulic work — and the city becomes more livable in the process.

At Godrej Rivergreens in Pune, the site's ravine was the hydrological logic made visible. We structured the entire masterplan around it: bioswales, native planting, soil stabilisation, and elevated trails through a functioning watershed.
At Riverhills, the Central Park is designed as an ecological sponge — absorbing rainfall, recharging groundwater, moderating microclimate — without conventional drainage carrying the primary load.

A city that works with its water cycle floods less, spends less on infrastructure, and is simply more pleasant to live in. The physics has always been in our favour. The planning imagination is what we've been missing.

What would your city look like if water had somewhere to go?

Credits : Team StudioPOD + Enviroscape
Photography : Atul Kanetkar
Pictures : Godrej Riverhills Central Park