Most of us live in some urban jungle. From idyllic small towns to mega-cities, our built jungles are starkly different from the niches our ancestors in the deep past woke up in. Despite this difference, how do our built environments shape our well-being? This question grew louder in my head as I delved deeper into researching how socioecologies that bear few resemblances with our ancestral past regulated mental health.

Fortunately, I shared this inner rambling with my close friend, Maitrey Prajapati. Narrating this brought him to recall a foundational principle that coloured his graduate training in architecture – urban planners & architects must think of the architecture of human psychology first in order to design built spaces and structures that nourish it aesthetically, functionally and therapeutically. Thus, every urban sprawl must have the diverse “intentions” of its numerous creators hidden in plain sight, as the eye surveys a city’s various structures and spaces. 

The following collection of narrative photographs from various cities represents our collective attempts over the years to ‘guess’ these hidden intentions to shape the psyche, using our subjective experience of living in these cities as a guide.