Municipal Governance: Role of the Elected and Executive- 2
After 70 years of republic and relatively slow rate of urbanization that will place some 840 million people in over 7900 cities and towns by 2050, doubling of the current urban population in just 30 more years, out of the three levels of government –national, state and local—the municipal government looks the weakest. The 74th […]
Municipal Governance: Role of the Elected and Executive- 1
After 70 years of republic and relatively slow rate of urbanization that will place some 840 million people in over 7900 cities and towns by 2050, doubling of the current urban population in just 30 more years, out of the three levels of government –national, state and local—the municipal government looks the weakest. The 74th […]
Sector based Pooled Finance Mechanisms for Urban Infra Financing
Background: The urbanisation process in India is the defining trend of the economic growth and there is an associate rising demand for investments in urban infrastructure. However, the urban infrastructure in India is facing chronic shortages in investments and inadequate Operation and Maintenance (O&M), which has led to problems such as inadequate service coverage, inequitable […]
Homelessness and the Right to the City in India
Homelessness constitutes one of the worst violations of the human right to adequate housing and the right to life as well as interrelated human rights to health, food, work/livelihood, security of the person and home, privacy, water, and sanitation, among other rights. Independent experts estimate that one per cent of India’s urban population (at least […]
Cities and Women Informal Workers
The vast majority of urban workers in India today (nearly 80 per cent) are informally employed. The urban informal workforce is engaged in a wide range of activities from manufacturing in small family units, to services like domestic workers and electricians, to trade in small shops or on the streets, to manual labour, notably in […]
City Planning and Urban Informal Livelihoods
India in Comparative Perspective The vast majority of urban workers in India today (nearly 80 per cent) are informally employed. The urban informal workforce is engaged in a wide range of activities from manufacturing in small family units, to services like domestic workers and electricians, to trade in small shops or on the streets, to manual labour, notably in construction, to transport workers. Women are a particularly invisible part of this urban work force as they tend to be […]
Urban Sustainability: Challenges, Visions & Strategies
Cities account for 60-80 per cent of energy consumption and 75 per cent of carbon emissions. They are also home to extreme poverty, unemployment and socio-economic disparities, non-optimal waste management, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, major contributors to air and water pollution and are key contributors to climate change, environmental degradation and low safety. […]
Cooperative Housing for Slum Free Cities in India – Day 1
Learnings from Uruguay The irony of having commodified land and housing is that we have cities with large numbers of empty houses, to the tune of 11 million units, kept as investment by the middle classes while at least 65 million people are forced to squat on available land in shanties (Census 2011). Efforts at […]
Rejuvenation and Restoration of Urban Water Ecologies- Water Ecologies & Cities Day 1
“Un-Damning” Urban Water Flows! Finding a place for water ecologies in our city. The natural flows of water in our cities have been victim to the unplanned urban explosion. Our inability to accommodate rivers, water bodies and other ecological balances within our urban growth patterns has resulted in the increasing patterns of floods and droughts. […]
City Planning – As If People Matter
Democratising City Planning through Citizen Participation Why is participation so loathed by most city managers and planners? Despite enormous normative agreement on the benefits of citizen participation, most city managers and planners would shy away and at times actively resist any meaningful participation of citizens in the city planning process. They often argue that participation […]
