Pluriverse of Alternatives: Courses

Designing for Life in Urban India: An Introduction to Ecological Responses to the Metacrisis

What might our cities look and feel like if they were designed as homes for life, human and more-than-human alike?

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.

About the Course

This course is organised by Kalpavriksh – Environment Action Group in collaboration with Sambhaavnaa Institute. It has been co-created by the subgroup of The Alternatives Learning Collective(TALC) and hosted under the Vikalp Sangam process.

Why Ecological Design? Why Urban Life as an Entry Point?

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

This five-day course is an invitation to pause, to listen closely to the worlds we inhabit, and to imagine differently, together. Rooted in shared inquiry, it creates a gentle space to sense, reflect and learn in community. 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)

Who is this course 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. 

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

In the long term, this contributes to a larger ecosystem of practitioners, educators, activists and citizens working toward pluriversal futures, many worlds, rooted in justice, co-existence and ecological well-being.

Course schedule (tentative):

DAY 1 – ARRIVING INTO THE METACRISIS

Day 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 

Day 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

Day 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.

Possible themes to be explored from holistic urban perspective:

• Urban governance
• Food & Health
• Energy

Guiding Question: How do power dynamics underpin ecological design?

DAY 4 – ALTERNATIVES & WORLDMaking

Day 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

Day 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?

APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN! Apply here.

Dates and Venue: 3rd to 7th April 2026, Sambhaavnaa Institute, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh

How to reach: Please visit: Getting here

Fees: Sliding scale (Rs. 10,000-Rs 14,000). We invite you to choose the option that reflects your access to financial resources. We are using a contribution-based, cross-subsidy model. This allows participants with greater access to financial resources to directly support those with fewer financial means, helping us hold a diverse and balanced group.

It is our intention to make this training accessible to participants from different socio-economic backgrounds. We have a small scholarship fund for a limited number of participants who need financial support. If finances are a barrier to this course, we strongly encourage you to write to [email protected] to apply for a scholarship based on your financial need.

Applications open until 25th March, 2026. We encourage you to apply early. Once all seats are filled, the application form will close even if it’s before the deadline.

For any other info:  WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and email [email protected]