The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) under the CITIIS programme is organising a photography competition, “Cities of Tomorrow”, to show the impact of sustainable and innovation-driven urban development. It will solicit entries from inhabitants of their cities, photographs which capture the resilience of urban spaces in constant flux.
CITIIS (Cities Investment to Innovate, Integrate & Sustain) is a joint programme of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), the French Development Agency (AFD), the European Union (EU), and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). The programme is assisting 12 cities across India – selected through a competitive process – to develop and implement innovative and sustainable urban infrastructure projects.
Entries are invited from the 12 cities where the CITIIS projects are located, namely, Agartala, Amaravati, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Dehradun, Hubballi-Dharwad, Kochi, Puducherry, Surat, Ujjain, and Visakhapatnam.
Participants are required to interpret and take photographs based on themes corresponding to the focus areas of CITIIS, i.e., sustainable mobility, public open spaces, e-governance and ICT, and social and organisational innovation in low-income settlements.
Hitesh Vaidya, director of NIUA, says, “I am eagerly waiting to witness how residents capture and creatively portray the innovative and sustainable urban development taking place in their cities.”
The entries will be judged by a panel of renowned photographers including Raghu Rai, Ketaki Sheth, and Sounak Banerjee. The winner will get Rs 50,000. The second and third prizes are Rs 25,000 and Rs 10,000, respectively. The winning entries will also be displayed at a public exhibition at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, in October, and are likely to travel to Paris for an exhibition next year.
The last date for submitting entries is August 15. Information on the rules for the competition and submission can be viewed at https://niua.in/citiis/citiis-photos-competition.
