Blog Posts: Cities

The ongoing pandemic has wreaked immense and lasting damage to India’s economy, and passenger transport has been particularly affected. Its far-reaching impact on the aviation and railway industry is well-documented, along with the struggles of...

A slightly modified version of this piece appeared on Times blog on May 11.

Social distancing, isolation and locking down of cities and oneself is the norm in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this, inequality in cities has been laid bare, exposing the startling vulnerability of the urban poor. The current economic slowdown is being...

The COVID-19 health crisis and associated lockdown has thrown into plain view the fragility of existing systems, from healthcare and governance, to the gig economy and global markets. With people confined to their homes and restricted mobility, cities are working to not only manage and contain the spread of the disease but also ensure a consistent, efficient and reliable supply of basic services. While the struggles of providing equal access to efficient and reliable basic services is not new to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in India, limiting contagion and avoiding secondary health impacts...

As the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, rapidly spreads across the world, health services in many nations are increasingly overwhelmed, while the global economy is falling into an unprecedented recession. The World Bank has cut India’s growth forecast for 2020-21 to 2.8%, down from 5% in 2019-20. Informal sector workers and members of lower income groups have been hit particularly hard as their wages have disappeared. The International Labour Organization estimates that...

Inequality is shaping how people are experiencing COVID-19 in cities to a startling degree. The vulnerability of the urban poor is striking everywhere, but the divide is more visible in some places than others.

This is where I live on Veera Desai Road in Andheri (K- West) ward of Mumbai. Though our ward has the third highest COVID-19...

Streets in the last century were primarily designed as a mode of transport for goods and services. This automobile-centric approach of street design stifled the human accessibility aspect, and eventually, cities forgot that every citizen is a pedestrian at some point in a day. But this scenario is changing, and cities globally are leading the movement to reinvest in their streets with a focus on pedestrian environment.

Mumbai is a city of pedestrians, with 51% of the total daily trips being walk trips, according to the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruptive new normal for everyone through shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines. But for the billions of urban poor, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome; they’re essentially impossible.

Social distancing is a critically important response to the pandemic, but it also assumes that residents have adequate space, services and social safety nets to survive such an order. This is simply not the reality across cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

More than...

This blog post originally appeared in WRI Insights.

India’s parliament approved the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill on July 31, 2019, the result of a five-year effort to improve national legislation on road safety. After the president’s approval, India’s streets may finally become safer places for both pedestrians and drivers.

Road traffic deaths have reached alarming levels across the world, with...

India suffers from the highest burden of road crashes, contributing to nearly 10% of global road deaths. In just the last decade (2008-2017), road crashes in India have increased by 23%, with an average annual increase of about 2% every year. The problem is particularly acute in urban areas, which witness nearly 42% of all crashes in the...

The last two decades have seen a rampant rise in environmental challenges being faced by cities and countries globally. In India, too, challenges related to air pollution, waste management, scarcity of water, conservation of natural resources, and loss of biodiversity, amongst others have been increasing. This photo essay uses animations based on satellite images to show the effect these challenges have had on our country.

Urbanisation

In the last two decades, India has urbanised at an unprecedented rate. This image shows the growth of Bangalore between 1990 and 2015....