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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 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is India’s flagship scheme serving as a social security net for millions of rural households; providing them guaranteed employment and income resilience. While it has contributed significantly to the rural life and economy, can it be used to mainstream climate agendas into development, and contribute to building resilience?

A model of convergence

Climate resilience is understanding how climate change – both slow-onset events (such as increasing sea levels, rising temperature, rapidly changing weather...

This blogpost was originally published in News18 on April 15.

On December 26, last year India’s Power System Operation Corporation Ltd. (POSOCO) faced a unique challenge: to mitigate the impact of a solar eclipse on the electricity grid. It was expected that the solar eclipse would disrupt the generation of solar energy due to blackout of the sun, and cause changes to the electricity demand pattern (due...

In contemporary India the household revolves around fulfilling the needs of children at home. Children are central to the decision-making process at every level. While Indian families make children a priority in designing households, our city-planners do not take into account the needs of future generation while planning Indian cities.

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...

The global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) highlights the intensity of global interconnections, and social and economic interdependence between regions. The pandemic has reinforced the critical need for access to safe and assured water supply for all, as described in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, for preventing rapid transmission of the disease.

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Water is an important defining element of settlements across the world and can be traced back through a city’s historical structure and morphology. The relationship between a city and its waterfront is unique and always changing, depending on the functions carried out on adjoining land.i

Since time immemorial, Indian cities have come up either on riverbanks or near surface waterbodies or over groundwater reservoirs, making the presence of water a founding feature of settlements. Historically, waterbodies played a vital role in defining the cultural heritage of a city. They provided public spaces for recreation, gatherings and religious activities, as well as a range of livelihood options, like fishing and boating. This dependence, in turn, ensured that these waterbodies were cared for and used by local communities, and fostered a water focused identity of the place....