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Exploring eco-friendly infrastructure alternatives to manage recurring cases of urban flooding events across Indian cities that will bring urban centres closer to nature.This integrated blue-green-grey approach makes use of natural systems (either intact or engineered) to provide urban services; for example, parks/squares absorb stormwater runoff, wetlands/lakes retain stormwater and mangroves mitigate impacts of storm surges and coastal erosion.

“People find it difficult to maintain social distancing in share autos and cabs. Buses are better than share autos and cabs because commuters can maintain social distancing in those,” said Chaitanya Kanuri, Urban Transport Manager at WRI India. 

"The State government must come up with a plan on how bus services can resumed for commuters who do not have access to the Metro. Buses are better than share autos and cabs because commuters can maintain social distancing in those,” said Chaitanya Kanuri, Urban Transport Manager at WRI India. 

Amit Bhatt, Director of Transport, WRI India, says: “It’s time to open up mass transport services without jeopardising the health and safety of people. The important part is personal hygiene including wearing face masks, hand wash and social distancing.”

MMRDA launched Yulu bikes, a public electric bike-sharing facility from the Raheja Towers in BKC. Madhav Pai, Director, WRI India said, “Mumbai needs last-mile connectivity options and these initiatives are ideal for it.”

“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.