Cities have always been expressions of human aspiration. From ancient walled cities and imperial capitals to garden cities, the City Beautiful, smart cities, and eco-cities, every era has imagined its own version of the ideal city — a place where social, economic, and cultural life can flourish in balance with its environment. Yet cities are also places of contradiction. They are shaped as much by conflict, inequality, informality, and adaptation as by design and planning.

The question of what constitutes an “ideal city” is especially urgent in India, where urbanization is unfolding at an unprecedented scale. Is it a city that is sustainable and climate-responsive? One that is inclusive and affordable? A city of efficient infrastructure and mobility? Or one that preserves its public life, cultural memory, and capacity for diversity?

The Charles Correa Foundation is organizing a three-day conference that brings together architects, planners, policymakers, historians, scholars, artists, and citizens to explore the ideal city as a product of imagination, investment, planning, and lived experience. Through conversations around themes such as the Sustainable City, the Governed City, the Inclusive City, the Public City, the Resilient City and beyond, participants will examine both global ideas and local realities.

The conference proposes that the ideal city is best understood as an ongoing project, like Habermas’ unfinished project of modernity, a collective act of imagination that must continually respond to changing environmental, social, and political conditions. By bringing together diverse voices and disciplines, the conference aims to open a broader conversation about the futures we desire for Indian cities, and the values and principles that should guide their transformation.