Reimagining the 'Good City' from Ennore Creek, Chennai

This project reimagines the idea of the ‘Good City’ from Ennore Creek in north Chennai, India, building collaborations between history, anthropology, environmental chemistry, planning and design as well as with Ennore’s resident communities and the activists who support them.

Ennore Creek is a coastal backwater of the Kosasthalaiyar River. It is home to numerous fishing communities and serves as a buffer against floods and sea level rise. After the 1950s it was rezoned for heavy polluting industries and a port in support of an idea of the ‘Good City’ associated with industrialization, modernization and globalization.

The project assesses the outcomes of this idea of the ‘Good City’ on Ennore’s fragile ecosystems and fishing communities and, with them, reimagines and articulates a more equitable, collaborative, restorative, ecological vision of the ‘Good City,’ applicable also to other contexts.

Professor Lindsay Bremner, University of Westminster