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“What’s not taken into account is that people also walk, cross, rest, run businesses, and celebrate festivals on the street,” Dhawal Ashar, manager, Urban Transport And Road Safety, WRI India, says. Mumbai is not renowned for parks, open grounds or even green patches, hosting a paltry 1.1 square kilometre of public space per person as opposed to 30 square kilometre in Delhi. Streets, then, are the only continuous network of public space in the city. On such a street, a footpath, if it exists, “is often 1.6 metres wide, sometimes only on one end,” Ashar says.

Urban flood management in India continues to focus only on improving grey infrastructure, rescue and relief, instead of building sustainable solutions to increase resilience. WRI India's urban water team identifies three major reasons for persistent urban flooding across India.

Amit Bhatt, Director of Integrated Urban Transport at World Resources Institute India, told HuffPost India in an interview over the phone that DMRC should also increase the frequency of metro services and develop a protocol for disinfection of surfaces. 

In 2019, BMC initiated a programme called the Mumbai Street Lab (MSL) in partnership with WRI. It invited architects and urban designers to facilitate the transformation of five streets in Mumbai: SV Road, Napean Sea Road, Vikhroli Park Site Road no.17, Maulana Shaukat Ali Road and Rajaram Mohan Roy Road. 

"The development in high recharge zones, which is nearly one-third of the total, has reduced the amount of water seeping underground and that is why you are seeing more instances of flooding after rain, especially during the monsoon," said Samrat Basak, director (Urban Water), WRI India.

Preliminary findings of an ongoing research by WRI-India indicate that 35% (428 sq.km) of new development within 20 km of the city centre (2000-15) in the nation’s 10 top cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Surat — has been on low-lying and high recharge potential zones. Unsurprisingly, these cities have seen multiple flood events in the last five years.

BengaluruMoving hackathon is being hosted by Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC), in partnership with World Resources Institute (WRI), Let Me Breathe and Directorate of Urban Land Transport, with the objective of encouraging passionate innovators to come forth with their ideas for decongesting Bengaluru city. 

हमने गुरुग्राम नगर निगम और राहगीरी फाउंडेशन नामक एनजीओ के साथ मिलकर एक वर्कशॉप का आयोजन किया। यह कार्यक्रम संबंधित पक्षों द्वारा मिलकर विचार मंथन करने और समझे जाने वाले मुद्दों पर आधारित उपयोगी जानकारी हासिल करने के लिए आयोजित किया गया था।

“The staffing and functioning of the proposed electric vehicle board and an EV cell within the transport department will be key to how this policy works out,” says Amit Bhatt, Executive Director - Integrated Transport.

Research-based knowledge of capacity can help rethink urbanisation from a ‘regional’ lens, wherein urbanisation can be visualised as a cluster of small- or medium-sized cities with rapid interconnectivity to keep economic linkages intact. A column by Dr. OP Agarwal (CEO, WRI India).

From waste management organisations that have continued to collect and manage waste through the lockdown, to clothing companies that have repurposed fabric to make face masks, entrepreneurs are rising to the occasion but their innovation necessitates reciprocation from investors, government, and communities, if they are to be sustained and scaled.
 

To further the goal of creating liveable cities, Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC) in partnership with Let Me Breathe and WRI India, is working towards reducing vehicular emissions and congestion in Bengaluru. “Improving Bengaluru’s mobility issues will require participation at different levels and through different stakeholders," says Sudeept Maiti (Senior Manager, Integrated Transport at WRI India).

Cities will likely be the predominant focus of the INR 2 trillion stimulus announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  WRI India's Pavan Ankonapalli (Lead, Urban Development) and Jaya Dhindaw (Director, Integrated Urban Planning) explain how to create an enabling environment to facilitate economic growth in Indian cities.

Prior to the pandemic, metros served about 8 million across 13 cities. Ensuring the safety of commuters on transport systems which experience passenger flows of of this density will need careful planning.

How can Indian cities take the recent cycling push as an opportunity to re-introduce the cycle as a preferred mode of transport? One way to do it will be to learn how other cities have revitalised cycling.

In India, 43 children die in road accidents every day. Not considering the needs of children while designing roads may have such tragic consequences. Cities must work for all, more so for the future generation that will grow in the cities. 

The traditional approach of bridging the revenue-cost gap in India through public subsidies will not be tenable as competing demands, to deal with the pandemic, will strain public budgets. Is it prudent then to explore newer paradigms for financing public transport?

If one were to open a Comprehensive Mobility Plan of any Indian city, it would show that nearly 60%-75% of the population either walks, cycles or uses public transport. However, the proposed projects and budget are always flyovers, underpasses, and road widening, which cater to the minority of the users.

इन कामगारों के सामने खड़ी चुनौतियां पूरी तरह नयी नहीं हैं, मगर महामारी के इस दौर में समाधानों को पहले से कहीं ज्यादा जल्दी पेश किये जाने की जरूरत है। अक्सर रोज कमाकर खाने वाले इन कामगारों के लिये वर्तमान आर्थिक प्रभाव भी कहीं ज्यादा विध्वंसक हैं।

For enterprises working in water, energy and waste management sectors, the lockdown has created a moment for introspection. Some enterprises are seeking ways to safely sustain or scale existing operations, while others are modifying their solutions or innovating new ones to find a new purpose during the lockdown.