Most people know nothing about their city's urban planning. The extent of everybody's knowledge is usually a complaint about potholes. Leewardists Studio is trying to change that, with its comics under Urbanist Comix. The studio describes its core skill as telling stories about cities and the built environment across different channels and media, and its comics page is o exception.

The page’s topics run from climate change, sanitation and public transport to gender, heritage, child-friendly design and walkability. The strips not only cover women’s experience of walking, transit and public toilets, but also parking and street vendors. Very few people would put a toilet and a heatwave in the same conversation, but Urbanist Comix treat both as urban design. And rightfully so. A city's ability to provide clean and hygienic public bathrooms as well as being able to support the horrible temperatures are ran settlements are rising to, is a huge sign of its merit.

For example the comic on climate change. We hear the phrase constantly, in headlines, conversations and reports of rising temperatures, floods, droughts and economic losses. But do those numbers tell the whole story? Urbanist Comix' strip questions what happens to the everyday lives, and sense of belonging tied to places that are changing, and what communities really lose when the climate does. Another comic notes that everyone is worried about the world warming up, just not politicians. (Surprise, surprise)

One of my absolute favourites, is the one talking about concerts in India. As someone who was stranded in South Bombay after the Guns N Roses concert for over 2 hours, because I couldn't get to my dad and had lost all cellular connection to book a cab, I understood this comic on a spiritual level.

The We Don’t Need... series, turns the lens on the profession itself. One strip imagines a future where architecture professors are replaced by AI, and asks what happens when cities ignore urban planners and the invisible work of planning that they quietly depend on. Planning, after all, is only noticed when it is missing with a broken footpath or the roads clogging up every time it rains.

Cities are made of decisions, most of them invisible until something goes wrong. Leewardists’ strips make those decisions easier to see, and easier to question. They incite a laugh that doubles as a lesson, for anybody who uses a footpath or takes the bus or simply crosses a road.

Follow Urbanist Comix on Instagram here, and check out their website.

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