In the next few decades a billion people will be urbanised. There will be over 40 megacities—more than 10 million inhabitants—most of which will be located in the 'global south', especially China and India. Cities already stretched to the seams will explode. The accelerated global warming and extreme weather events will only make the situation worse resulting in unimaginable consequences. Radical City: Imagining Possibilities for the Indian City argues that we should urgently reflect on the question raised by the luminaries of Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) nearly a century back, 'Should our cities survive?', because the Functional City—a conglomeration with differentiated zones of activity and transportation of people and materials between the zones—invented by CIAM has outlived its usefulness. Rethinking the city, therefore, cannot be the province of planners and technocrats alone. Instead, this book brings together artists, architects, writers, poets, designers, urban planners, social scientists, humanists and others to think about the city and its possibilities. Contents: Acknowledgements Pithamber R. Polsani Introduction: Should Our Cities Survive? PART I A Field of Inspirations Sudhanva Deshpande The City as Stage Namrata Toraskar ‘Belonging’ in a City of Unbelongers Kiranmayi Indraganti City: The Perceptual Field of Inspirations Savyasaachi Non-human Nature and City Life: Exploring the Radical Middle Ground PART II Palimpsest of Possibilities Sohail Hashmi What Is a City Neelkanth Chhaya City as Organic Patchwork, City as Streamlined Machine Sonal Mithal, Arul Paul and Fahad Zuberi Lucknow Unrestrained: Palimpsest of Incongruous Possibilities PART III Fractured Realities Mustansir Dalvi Art Deco Bombay: The Radical Re-imagination of the City through Its Aesthetics Rachna Mehra Land(e)scapes of Utopia: Reconciling Old Ways of Living in New Towns in India Pithamber R. Polsani Ruinous Imaginations PART IV Material Manifestations Sankalpa City in Steel and Timber Priya Joseph Death of Brick: Rise of the Vertical City Gauri Bharat Advertising RCC: Material Mainstreaming in Pre-independence India PART V Potentialities and Probabilities M. N. Ashish Ganju Spontaneous Urbanisation Tikender Singh Panwar Governance of Cities from the 74th Amendment to Special Purpose Vehicles Index