Designing for Life in Urban India—An Introduction to Ecological Responses to the Metacrisis
This workshop is organised by Kalpavriksh – Environment Action Group in collaboration with Sambhaavnaa Institute. (Co-created by the subgroup of The Alternatives Learning Collective(TALC)
Hosted under the Vikalp Sangam process)
3rd to 7th April 2026
| नैहरवा हमका नहिं भावे, हमका नहि भावै।साई की नगरी परम अति सुंदर, जहँ कोई जावे ना आवै।चाँद सूरज जहाँ पवन ना पानी, को संदेश पहुँचावे।दरद यह साईं कौन सुनावै।। आगे चलो पंथ नहिं सूझै, पीछै दोष लगावै।केहि विधि ससुरे जाव मोरी सजनी, बिरहा जोर जनावै।विषय रस नाच नचावै।। | I find no joy in my native home. The home of my beloved is the most beautifulBut nobody goes or comes from thereWhere there is no moon or water. How do I send a message? Who will speak of my pain to my beloved? I cannot see any path aheadAnd the past is blamedHow will I go to the house of my beloved?The separation burnsThe duality making us dance to its tune Sant Kabir |
What might our cities look and feel like if they were designed as homes for life, human and more-than-human alike?
Background
What if streets, homes, rivers, workplaces and neighbourhoods were places that nurtured care, dignity, belonging and ecological balance, rather than exhaustion, extraction and exclusion?
Across Indian cities today, many of us live with a quiet unease. Air is harder to breathe, water less certain, work increasingly precarious and everyday life shaped by pressures of time, money, heat, noise and isolation. The ecological crisis is not out there, it is also within us. Alongside visible ecological breakdown, we encounter less visible crises like persistent anxiety, burnout, fraying social fabric, and a growing disconnection from land, food, craft and care. Though often experienced separately, these challenges are deeply intertwined.
Many thinkers and movements describe this convergence as the metacrisis: the understanding that ecological collapse, social injustice, economic instability and cultural alienation arise from the same dominant ways of organising human life. Rather than isolated problems to be fixed, they invite us to rethink how we design our cities, livelihoods, institutions and relationships with the more-than-human world.Using urban life in India as an entry point, this course explores ecological design as a relational way of seeing and living. Drawing from grounded alternatives across India and frameworks such as the Flower of Transformation (FOT), participants will explore how everyday systems food, shelter, energy, governance and care can be reimagined as ethical, regenerative and life-affirming processes.
Why Ecological Design? Why Urban Life as an Entry Point?
About the Workshop
This 5-day in-person course at Sambhaavnaa Institute is organised in collaboration with a subgroup of The Alternatives Learning Collective (TALC) and is hosted under the Vikalp Sangam process
Cities sit at the heart of the metacrisis. They are shaped by long histories of drawing resources, labour and energy from rural landscapes, often leaving behind ecological damage and social fracture. Within cities themselves, these extractive patterns manifest as air pollution, water scarcity, heat stress, waste overload, inequality, precarity and growing disconnection from land, food and care.
At the same time, cities have also offered many people forms of mobility, anonymity, freedom, cultural expression and collective life that are not always available elsewhere. They hold contradictions: oppression and possibility, alienation and belonging, collapse and creativity.
Because cities concentrate people, wealth, institutions and decision-making power, they also carry a disproportionate responsibility and potential for change. How cities are designed, governed and lived in profoundly shapes ecological futures far beyond their boundaries.
Through this course, we will explore ecological design to approach urban life as a living system rather than a collection of isolated problems. It invites us to attend to relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, between governance and everyday practice, between infrastructure and care. Using urban life as an entry point will allow participants to work with their own lived realities while cultivating ethical, collective and regenerative responses to the metacrisis.
Pedagogy & Learning Approach
The course is anchored by talks and conversations with thinkers, practitioners and doers working on urban crises, ecological design and grounded alternatives. These inputs will expand into facilitated discussions, reflections and spaces for collective sense-making and co-creation of meaning.
Our days will begin with shramdaan, rooting learning in the rhythms of the land through farm work and seasonal practices. Nature-based and collective practices before sessions will help participants arrive fully, in body and attention. Learning will be participatory, reflective and experiential, integrating creative processes such as worldmaking, storytelling, songs, memory mapping and small-group reflections. The pedagogy is values-centred, emphasising deep listening, plurality, care, rest, silence and questions rather than fixed answers.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will:
- Gain a systems-level understanding of the metacrisis and how it manifests in the Indian urban context
- Engage with the metacrisis through key urban themes such as rights of nature, governance, food and energy
- Understand ecological design, Flower of Transformation and other frameworks as ways of engagement in the metacrisis
- Develop tools to analyse urban crises from multiple perspectives
- Encounter grounded alternatives and their design logics
- Reflect on your own values, roles and forms of agency
- Build relationships with a network of peers exploring regenerative futures
- Create a personal or collective “next steps” plan (project, shift in practice, resource group, community initiative)
Theory of Change
This course is grounded in the belief that systemic transformation begins with shifts in perception, relationships, and everyday practices. When people learn to see the world through ecological and political lenses, interconnected, value-laden, and historically shaped, they begin to redesign their own choices, communities, and institutions. - Through embodied experiences, shared reflection, and exposure to grounded alternatives, participants cultivate:
- Ecological literacy
- Political awareness
- Ethical clarity
- Collective imagination
- Agency and solidarity
Who is the workshop For
Youth and adults living in cities who are engaged in, or committed to engaging with, responses to local multi-faceted crises. This includes people interested in ecological living, climate action, social justice, urban transformation, education, design, policy, community organising and grassroots or alternative initiatives. This space is also open to those at the beginning of their journey, who may be new to this work and bring sincerity, curiosity and a readiness to learn. We welcome participants from diverse backgrounds and sectors, including those studying and/or working in social enterprises, non-profit and for-profit organisations, academia, etc.
Please find the tentative schedule here:
DAY 1 – ARRIVING INTO THE METACRISIS
Objective: To build a shared understanding of the metacrisis as an interconnected ecological, social, political and emotional condition shaping contemporary life.
Theme: Interconnection, Collapse & Care
Guiding Question: What is happening to our world and how are we already inside it?
DAY 2 – ECOLOGICAL DESIGN & FLOWER OF TRANSFORMATION: FRAMEWORKS FOR SEEING LIFE AS SYSTEM
Objective: To introduce ecological design as a relational framework for understanding and reimagining how human societies live within natural systems.
Theme: Designing with nature, not against it
Guiding Question: What does it mean to think and live ecologically?
DAY 3 – LIVING THE CRISIS IN CITIES
Objective: To examine urban life as a culturally, socially, economically, politically and ecologically designed system that produces injustice, vulnerability and crisis of the ‘self’.
Theme: Urban systems, injustice & everyday life
Guiding Question: How does power dynamics underpin ecological design?
DAY 4 – ALTERNATIVES & WORLDMaking
Objective: To explore grounded alternatives and collective imagination as living responses to the metacrisis beyond dominant development models.
Theme: Imagining and practising otherwise
Guiding Question: If this system is failing, what already exists beyond it?
DAY 5 – PATHWAYS FORWARD: AGENCY & ACTION
Objective: To support participants in translating learning into ethical, collective and sustainable forms of engagement and action.
Theme: From insight to grounded engagement
Guiding Question: What can we do, together, from where we are?
Please submit your application by 25th March, 2026. Seats are limited, so we encourage you to apply early. Once all seats are filled, the application form will close, even if it’s before the deadline. We’d love to receive your application soon!
Dates and Venue: 3rd to 7th April 2026 , Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO Kandbari, Tehsil Palampur, District Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh.
How to reach: Please visit: Getting here
For any other info: WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and email [email protected]