Ruchita Bansal discusses what happens when modern infrastructure projects are built at speed but don’t connect with the deep, informal systems that make cities work.

Drawing on her experience across Indian urban planning and large-scale delivery, we explore how cities in India are being transformed rapidly with metros, highways and ambitious timelines, yet often miss the connective tissue of everyday life such as first-mile/last-mile walking, informal transport, street life and safety.

We dig into whether building faster actually deepens resilience or erodes memory, how imported models can misfit local context, and what it means to design infrastructure that truly serves people rather than object-centric headlines.