Dear friends,
A warm welcome to The Curio-City Collective (TCC) family!
It gives us great pleasure to be writing to you as we formally launch our newsletter – The Commune. Every fortnight, The Commune, will be a space for us to share the work we have been doing alongside our reflections and insights.
TCC is to be a learning ecosystem that builds a path to present and future holistic well-being in cities by re-connecting people, communities and ecosystems through practices of reflection, education and action. Our intention behind building this space is to offer people the ability to choose and construct their own unique journeys towards transformative change by providing them a repository of information, knowledge, skills and experience. This organisation is an outcome of our own struggle with feeling fragmented, torn and overwhelmed by the state of Indian cities – our homes, that have through the years, raised and nurtured us.
By 2030, India is expected to have 590 million people living in its cities. It is projected that 68 cities will have a population of 1 million plus. The implications of such urbanisation are unprecedented. Already multiple major Indian cities are burgeoning and showing signs of being under severe stress. Many of us are experiencing this through an increasing sense of disconnection from the self, our communities and the landscape around us. It is in context of these changes that we felt a new way of understanding and embodying growth is urgently required.
The world over, multiple well-being indexes are evolving in response to the recognition that a merely economic definition of development does not capture the little things that make life meaningful and worthwhile. TCC’s well-being framework for cities, which underpins our learning ecosystem, brings together three areas: local conditions; sustainability and resilience; and, democratic values. We look at how improvements in these inter-connected arenas can lead to happier and healthier cityscapes.
One of our first attempts has been with our podcast in development. The Curio-City Collective podcast will attempt to break out of being overwhelmed in the face of fast-paced, dramatic changes in cities, by capturing ideas, perspectives and endeavours which meaningfully re-build knowledge and connection.
We thank you for joining us on this journey. Do feel free to share this newsletter with anyone who would be interested in being part of this growing community.
Warm regards,
Team TCC