Urban Commons, Future Smart Cities and Sustainability

The composite of knowledge and innovationKnowledge and Innovation play a vital role in the economic and spatial restructuring of the cityCities. The chapter examines the research that includes need identification with emerging global discourses of knowledge and spatial developmentDevelopment. The assessment of the critical parameters for knowledge and innovation from a global and Indian perspective. The evaluation of knowledge-based indicators for Karnataka along with sustainable development goalsSustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This chapter has four sections. The first section discusses the global cases for knowledge-based development and growthKnowledge based development and growth. The examination of expenditure on research and development as gross domestic product percentage for IndiaIndia is only 0.64 in juxtaposition to Israel and South Korea which has a higher proportion of 4.95 and 4.80% dedicated to innovation and research. The second section discusses India’s existing condition and proposed approaches to embark upon knowledge-based growthGrowth and developmentDevelopment. This assessment includes the ‘global innovation indicesGlobal Innovation indices’ and NITI Aayog’s knowledgeNITI Aayog’s knowledge indices-based development parameters. The third section addresses the SDGsSustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and innovation policiesPolicy from notable Indian states. The chapter particularly focuses on Karnataka Vision 2030 sinceKarnataka Vision 2030 it has obtained the best score in NITI Aayog’s ranking for innovation 2020. Lastly, some recommendations for knowledge-based developmentDevelopment, demystifying the approaches from international and national cases, are included at the end of chapter.

The wellbeingWellbeing of people centres on the value of their families and jobs; hence, they exert effort on issues directly impacting these two sections. However, this focus has led to the decline of social cohesion. Thus, citiesCities must incorporate space outside work and home if they are to promote healthy societal life. Commercial and public space fails to foster togetherness due to market logic forces and the illegality of citizens to maintain neglected spaces. Therefore, this calls for inclusive participation of citizens in managing shared goods and services or urban commonsUrban common. Despite the diversity of commons, only parks and greenery are used to describe those of a recreational nature. This chapter advocates for the use of recreational centresRecreational centres as urban commonsUrban common in communities that experience deterioration, due to their potential to bring about regenerationRegeneration. Using degenerated recreational centresRecreational centres in ZambiaZambia, this research adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the potential and determine the barriers constraining the regenerationRegeneration of these facilities. The chapter found that although recreational centresRecreational centres are valuable, their management is hampered by a lack of institutional support and poor policyPolicy enforcement. Management of recreational centresRecreational centres as urban commonsUrban common must thus be policy-driven for successful community regenerationRegeneration.

The concept of commonsCommons has been investigated in academia through multiple disciplinary lenses. This chapter explores the concept of commons, attempting a thematic categorisation along those disciplinary lines. The themes thus derived include—availability, accessibility, conflicts, rights and innovation. Thereupon, a framework is drawn to develop a supra-concept of political commonsPolitical commons relevant to our study of governance in smart citiesSmart cities. Smart cities are essentially state projects aimed at living better and governing smarter. Their default initiation from the state quarters stipulates placing commonsCommons within a political context—one pertaining to the public sphere and its activities. Conceptual explication of political commonsPolitical commons then outlines its measurable ‘SOFT’ characteristics that relate to the interests of the subjects (people) with an implicit objective of a politico-democratic functioning, between interoperable forces of state/market/society, and using technological and social processes as tools. The chapter uses community mediaCommunity Media as an example for empirically rooting this concept. The utility of political commonsPolitical commons as a conceptual framework is, thus, suggested in its ability to direct identification of newer and relevant commons, provoke theorisation (ideation) around them and create pathways for their active application/commoning (instrumentality) in pursuit of sustainable urbanUrban futures informed by democratic principles and practices.

The relationships of the expression and phenomenon of ‘urban sprawl’ with suburban and regional urban growthsUrban Growth in spatio-temporal, socio-cultural, socio-economic and global contexts are rejigged here. Different contexts under which varied urban sprawlsUrban Sprawl originate and perform interest this chapter. Pursuing traditional ‘Emic’ (insiders centred) and ‘Etic’ (cross-cultural, detached) approaches, we read the changing trends in cross-cultural suburbanisation(s). Further, the two independent constructs are corelated through an ‘emic-etic’ synthesis when the author engages in auto-ethnography (use of prior personal observations and experiences) and reinforces statistical and literature studies. With the background of living in the western part of Greater MelbourneMelbourne (Australia) and ChandigarhChandigarh (IndiaIndia) for 19 and 30 years, respectively, the author pairs the two locations and studies the former’s suburban growth (urban sprawls) and the latter’s periphery, notwithstanding their developmental and urbanisationUrbanization levels, historical, cultural and political differences. Both inform the phenomena underlying their growthGrowth in different lights. We learn from their illuminating comparisons. MelbourneMelbourne relates to the farsighted policiesPolicy of visionaries like administrator Captain Arthur Phillip, the founder of the Australian urbanUrban and suburbanscapeSuburbascape. Chandigarh, India's modern and Nehru's idealistic capital cityCities, boosted the country's post-independence urbanism—a layered amalgamation of indigenous, Mughal and colonial settlements that manifest in transforming midsized Indian cities, towns and villages. In the following observations, we realise how shortcomings, even maladies of both the ‘ideas-inspired’ (MelbourneMelbourne) and ‘circumstantially hybrid’ (ChandigarhChandigarh) growths are being rectified via urban consolidation, conservation (sustainably justified densities), and promotion of smart-sustainable infrastructure including transportation.

In 2011, over 65 million people lived in slumsSlums in urban IndiaUrban India. A slumSlums is an informal settlementInformal Settlement that largely consists of dilapidated housingDilapidated housing, small living area, without adequate access to clean and potable drinking water, sanitationSanitation and unstable renting agreement. Within these slumSlums settlements exist real people and communities whose lives revolve around the nexus of urban (in)formal economy, with hopes and dreams for a better future for themselves and their next generation, as they take decisions to out-migrate from underdeveloped rural areas. These informal and yet vibrant communities often become the backbone of urbanUrban economies. Despite a lack of basic amenities, these settlements provide affordable housingHousing to a significantly large share of slumSlums dwellers in India’sIndia citiesCities. This chapter reviews academic literature along six major themes to summarise the accomplishments so far, and existing gaps that need further attention. These include the following: (1) Effects of GlobalisationGlobalization and the Neoliberal Economy in Housing Crises and GrowthGrowth of SlumsSlums in India, (2) Neoliberal Economy and Wage Inequality, (3) Changing Patterns of Economy—From Formal to Informal, (4) Rural–Urban MigrationUrban migration and the Role of Urban-centric Economic Bias, (5) Livability in Urban IndiaUrban India and Declining Quality of Life and (6) Methodological Focus in Urban SlumSlums Scholarship in India. This chapter concludes with suggestions for under-researched lines of work with the hope of a spatially informed policyPolicy intervention.

The cityCities of Delhi and its peripheries have undergone profound changes in the last two centuries owing to both a rise in the population and an increase in economic growthGrowth, causing tremendous changes in the overall land use pattern. The recent trends in the urban developmentUrban Development post-economic liberalisationEconomic liberalization indicate a sharp turn in transforming Delhi into a global city that highly serves the purpose of the ‘capital’ and therefore the very goal of neoliberalisation. The opening up of the Indian economy to the international markets has essentially changed the politico-administrative arrangements which are strongly getting reflected in the overall context of the developmentDevelopment of the large citiesCities. Examples can be drawn from the ambitions expressed by the government to make Delhi a ‘world-class city’ and the hosting of landmark events as prominent steps towards such transformation. This framework of developmentDevelopment often counters the concerns of building an inclusive cityCities and intensifies the polarisation process. The chapter reflects upon the transformation of the peri-urbanPeri-urban space of NCR Delhi and the redefinition of the urbanUrban landscape following the ideology of world-class development. First, it presents a broader picture of the overall developmentDevelopment of the peri-urbanPeri-urban Delhi by discussing the pattern of change reflected in its physicality as well as the sociality, and second, it initiates a discussion to examine the role of media advertising, especially of the real-estate housingHousing market in reinvigorating the meaning of the urban.

While an ever-increasing and economically marginalised urban population is a principal constitutive element when thinking about urban sprawlUrban Sprawl, another significant element is the embodied aspiration of the growing Indian Middle Class to live in a ‘world-class cityCities’. In this chapter, we aim to explore the political economy framework on how class-animated city spaces lead to newer images of urban frontiers eluding the realities of sprawl and disorder that they constitute. Informal economicInformal economy activity by the vendors is seen as a spilling ‘hazard’ by middle-class citizens, who believe that public spaces like streets, pavements and parks should be hygienic and spectacular, and enhance the quality of urbanUrban life. With its omnipresent role in redefining the legitimacy of ‘worlding cities’, the neoliberal state is usually at odds with the vendors’ interests and makeshift vending spaces. Nevertheless, at the same time, it concurs with growing motorised vehicles, redundant infrastructures and ‘spectacular’ high-rises to accomplish its goal of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. In this article, drawing on an intersectional conceptual framework and empirical observations from street vending in KolkataKolkata, we trace a route to look into urban environmentsEnvironments as subsumed within popular mass politics and not as a linearly ecological category. We establish that street-based livelihood activities, despite being popularly seen as sprawl and a ‘cityCities-hazard’, formatively proliferate through powerfully shaped strategiesStrategy of politics and governmentality.

PolycentricPolycentric urban growthUrban growth has become a commonCommons feature of most urban spacesUrban space in post-FordistPost-Fordist times. CitiesCities that were originally monocentricMonocentric have adopted polycentric patterns of urban growth, which have been largely fuelled by economic decentralisationEconomic decentralization and globalisationGlobalization of centres of production and consumption, with far looser connections to the central business districtsCentral Business District (CBDs). Especially since the 1990s, as the developing economies have gradually integrated into the globalised free market, several developing-world cities have also transitioned into polycentricPolycentric functionalities. MumbaiMumbai, the financial capital of India,India was fast to transition due to its economic functionality along with the central business districts becoming enormously unaffordable for the middle class. Nariman Point, Mumbai’sMumbai once-hyped CBDCentral Business District, has now been eclipsed by the newly emerging economic hubs in the suburbia—transitioning the metropolis into a world-class polycentricPolycentric entity. This has changed the concentration of economic and commercial activities across MumbaiMumbai, thereby influencing its housingHousing patterns and commute behaviour. This study explores Mumbai’sMumbai history of transition from a monocentricMonocentric to a polycentricPolycentric existence and compares the declining functionality of its original CBD with the newly emerging economic growthGrowth centres. Our data comprises secondary sources, along with personal reconnaissance and lived-in histories and observations during field surveys that were employed to acquire better insights into the nature of economic and business operations in MumbaiMumbai. Through the employment of descriptive qualitative and textual analysis, we find the increasing role of newly developing polycentricPolycentric-urbanUrban centres and their influence on the changing residential and urban communities of MumbaiMumbai.

Mainly the countries of rapidly growing economies have experienced the unceasing, unplanned and unsystematic transformation from physical environmentEnvironments of rural areas into the cultural milieu of urbanUrban areas over the modern eras. The escalation of anthropological activities within the metropolitan vicinity has been directed for serving the altered drill of land useLand use within and outside of metropolitan area with mark effects of ecosystem. Urban sprawlingUrban sprawling can be identified by continuous urban growthUrban growth. Balichak is one of the emerging forms of census town in terms of economic activities, settlement, transport and administrative centre in Paschim Medinipur District. This present attempt tried to estimate the spatio-temporal alterations of urbanUrban land use dynamicsLand use dynamics at Balichak census town where the land useLand use and cove pattern are altering vigorously. It is crucial to include the various indicators liable to vigorous practice and create complex relationships among them in order to achieve the sustainable developmentDevelopment. In this concern, some technologies and tools such as geospatial modellingGeospatial modeling and system dynamics framework as well as perception surveyPerception survey of local residents suggest sufficient prospects in spatial and temporal aspects to understand quantify and monitor the urban dynamics. Operation research approaches and multi-agent system approaches have been able to apprehend the dynamism of the landscape alterations scheme and also be treated as a convenient tool to predict the potential upcoming alterations. Therefore, this study tried to measure the accelerating difficulties of sprawling in Balichak area with the incorporation of remotely sensed techniques and Geographical Information System methods to efficiently consider, appraise and evaluate the different strategyStrategy formulation for maintaining the sustainabilitySustainability and integrated spatial monitoringIntegrated spatial monitoring of this unplanned growthGrowth of urbanUrban landscape.

Rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization and expansion of the urbanUrban area are leading to spatial change and uneven growthGrowth around the citiesCities. The changing land useLand use pattern inside and outside of the city area is a concern where the land conversion is happening with an increase in the built-up area and a decrease in the land under other utilisation. This study has incorporated the spatial expansion of Bardhaman cityBardhaman city of West Bengal, India,India between the time period of 2001, 2011 and 2021. The expansion of the urban area is determined by the changes in the land use land coverLand use land cover between the time period. The Shannon EntropyShannon Entropy model is used for showing the changes around the centre of the city towards the outside. The result shows that there is a rapid increase in the built-up area specifically in certain directions. The land is being converted from agriculture to built-up areas in the periphery of the cityCities. New townships and the development of large projects are taking the agricultural land.

The rapid rate at which cities and towns are urbanising is of concern to urbanUrban planners globally. UrbanisationUrbanization has caused urban sprawlUrban Sprawl and densification of urban landscapes of cities. This chapter is based on a project that has used remote sensingRemote sensing and social survey methods to assess the transformation of the physical landscape into urban landscape in the Awutu Senya East Municipality between 1986 and 2021. Remote sensing analysisRemote sensing analysis entailed image classification and change detection. Social survey involving questionnaire administration and key informant interviews were conducted to ascertain the causes and impacts of declining vegetative cover. Vegetation and barelands were more transformed into urbanUrban landscape. Rising population of the locality related to urban sprawl and intensification causing a decrease in vegetal cover and barelands from a coverage of 53.5% and 35.4%, respectively, in 1986 to 15.3% and 13.7%, respectively, in 2021, while built-up environmentEnvironments increased from 9.7% in 1986 to 70.6% in 2021. Most conversions of vegetation were between 1986 and 2002, barelands between 2002 and 2021 while built-up assumed a rising trend throughout the period. The main driving forceDriving forces of vegetal and bareland diminution is urbanisationUrbanization which caused an increase in the built-up environment. The landscape transformation is perceived to be causing urban heat, urban aesthetic damage, flooding, etc. The study recommends the development and implementation of a land use plan focusing on urban greening to improve upon the ecological services of the municipality.

This study examines the interdependency between economic and urban growthUrban growth in the 35 states and union territories (UTs) of IndiaIndia during 1981–2011, using the framework of economic liberalisationEconomic liberalization of 1991. To examine the inter-state relationships in terms of sectoral composition and changing trends, seven variables representing the processes of urbanisationUrbanization and urban growth rates along various dimensions of economic growthGrowth, including state level income and their sectoral contributions, are analysed for the entire study area for census years 1981–2011. Factor analysisFactor analysis, KMO testKMO test and Bartlett’s test of sphericity evaluate the significant factors affecting urbanUrban and economic change in the states and UTs of India. We find wide regional disparities in growth and developmentDevelopment, both spatially and temporally, with previously underdeveloped states and newly carved states growing at rates far better than anticipated. The emerging manufacturing-induced services have created the knowledge and skills to produce and process a wide range of industrial and consumer products, which have continued to drive the Indian economy. Simultaneously, the large-scale migrationMigration towards megacities and second-tier citiesCities have created a new spatial orderNew spatial order, with strategic face-lifting of specific parts and expanded informal settlementsInformal Settlement in others, marking an interesting dualism in Indian urban system in response to liberalisation.

Comprehensive plans, known as ‘master planMaster/development Plans’ or ‘blueprint’, are statutory tools to guide cities’ current and future land utilisation and zoning for 20–25 years. UrbanUrban master planning and land useLand use plans are criticised for being costly, having rigid bylaws, and failing to control the developmentDevelopment in a planned manner. Therefore, the research conducted an ex-post plan evaluationEx-post plan evaluation of urban land use plans prepared under master plansMaster/development Plans to determine if the proposed land uses conformed to subsequent existing land usesLand use. Considering the rigidity of the planning process in IndiaIndia, the research adopted a conformance-based evaluationConformance-based evaluation methodology and quantitativeQuantitative analysis for the case of five citiesCities, viz. Indore, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Jaipur and Surat to comprehend the urban land use dynamicsLand use dynamics. The results showed that the master plansMaster/development Plans of almost all the cities were considerably non-conforming. The non-conformance was evident in all land use categories and most significantly in commercial, recreational, circulation and overall developed/urbanised area. The research concludes that, given the lack of accountability for value-added outcomes and ex-post urban plan evaluation, proposed urban plans remain unevaluated, resulting in areas of non-conformance. The research recommends incorporating sustainable urbanUrban management strategiesStrategy along with monitoring and ex-post plan evaluationEx-post plan evaluation to adhere to the planning proposals in order to use the land judiciously and provide a better quality of life.

Zambia’sZambia urban population, estimated at almost 45%, is growing rapidly resulting in uncontrolled development,Development especially in peri-urbanPeri-urban areas. This chapter explores sustainabilitySustainability of urban planningUrban planning practice in developing country situations. In particular, the study examines first, the background of urban developmentUrban Development in the country and its spatial distribution and association with population and economic growth. Secondly, the chapter examines post-independence urbanUrban development with its concomitant rural–urban migrationMigration of population, relatively high urban growthUrban growth rates and urban sprawl. The chapter is cognizant that developmentsDevelopment in most of the rapidly growing citiesCities in ZambiaZambia have typically been informal and uncoordinated in low-density areas and swallowing up surrounding rural land. The chapter also examines the integrated development planningIntegrated Development Planning (IDP) approach currently promulgated as a solution to most planning ills. Thus, the chapter explores sustainabilitySustainability of current urban planningUrban planning approaches, with respect to satisfying social, economic and environmental developmentDevelopment needs of people and in countering urban sprawlUrban Sprawl. The chapter uses geospatial analysis of past, present and future trends of urban sprawl in Kitwe the largest city in the Copperbelt Province, to contextualise the understanding of urban sprawlUrban Sprawl and sustainable urban developmentUrban Development policies in ZambiaZambia.

The environmental implications of aggravating urbanisationUrbanization associated with the alteration of landscape are of grave concern of urbanUrban planners now. This crisis is acute in many regions in the world, especially in the highly populated tropics. Urban geographers and planners are centring on climatically receptive designs to reduce undesirable microclimatesMicroclimate. It demands scientific studies to address the problems related to the ill effect of unplanned developmental activities in the cityCities. This study is an attempt to examine the spatio-temporal changes in the land useLand use and land cover especially the built-up area and their impact in the land surface temperatureLand Surface Temperature (LST) (LST). LandsatLandsat imageries of 2000, 2010 and 2020 have been used to estimate the LULCLand use land cover, LST, NDVINormalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) and NDBINormalized differential built-up index (NDBI). The chapter shows that there is a remarkable increase in the built-up area and the land surface temperatureTemperature for the last two decades. The mean temperature in the district was 26.76 °C in 2000, 28.54 °C in 2010 and 30.38 °C in 2020. The study suggests that it is necessary to have more focus on policies which will give more emphasis to urban greenery or urbanUrban forest concept in the upcoming years in order to reduce the land surface temperatureLand Surface Temperature (LST) in the district.

As the cityscape of large metropolitan citiesCities gets increasingly supersaturated, policymakers and developers are being compelled to transform undeveloped land and the natural landscape of peri-urbanPeri-urban areas into urbanUrban fabrics. Industrial developers and entrepreneurs’ first choice was the peri-urban spaces where land is readily available for construction without a hassle of complicated legal restrictions; furthermore, government’s supportive policies on infrastructure development may have exacerbated the impacts of urbanisation on the ecological and agricultural areas. After the beginning of the economic liberalisation and more import friendly policiesPolicy in the early 1990s resulted in massive socioeconomic growth and infrastructure developmentsDevelopment untimely led urban land use spread out of the city into the peri-urban area along the major highways. Therefore, this study aimed at quantifying and evaluating the trends of urban growthUrban growth and how it affects farmland in the peri-urbanPeri-urban areas of Bolpur town using an integrated approach of GIS toolGeographical Information Systems (GIS) and support vector machine (SVM) learning algorithms. Comprehensive LULCLand use land cover maps were generated for four distinct years during a 30-year span using a multi-temporal (1990–2020) Landsat datasetLandsat dataset, following that, classified images were validated with actual G.P.S data. Kappa statisticsKappa statistics indicate a satisfactory result with more than 86% accuracy for all those images. Observations derived from present study reveal that over the past 30 years a significant change occurred in the LULC; a major portion of agricultural land and forested area was converted into a residential area for developing tourismTourism and township projects.

Dhaka is one of the most populous megacities, facing rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization and population growthGrowth. It has been undergoing vast territorial expansion and infrastructural developmentDevelopment in recent decades. These uncontrolled changes in the cityCities degrade the environmental quality and reduce the health status of cityCities dwellers. Understanding patterns and drivers is critical to regulating these changes and practising sustainable managementSustainable Management. Therefore, this chapter aims to identify urban growthUrban growth patterns and their pivotal driving forcesDriving forces in the megacity. LandsatLandsat (TM, OLI sensors) satellite imageries from 1990 to 2020 were used at decadal intervals to identify change patterns. Urban LULCLand use land cover was prepared using a hybrid classification method (combining supervised and unsupervised techniques). Afterward, the driving forces of urbanUrban growthGrowth in the cityCities were investigated using spatial data layers in geodetectorGeodetector and data obtained through questionnaires survey, and previous literature. According to the analysis, the urban area increased by 40%, whereas green space declined by 41%. Major driving forcesDriving forces are anthropogenic, such as economic opportunities, education, and medical facilities, which worked as pull factors for rural–urban migrationUrban migration resulting in urban population growth. Natural determinants, such as drainage systems, inundated lands, suitable soil types and textures for building infrastructures; artificial determinants, such as distance from the city core, roads and railways worked together in shaping the spatial locations of the city expansion. To transform Dhaka into a sustainable cityCities, policymakers should regulate or control these determinants.

Türkiye is located in the Mediterranean Basin, one of the hotspot areas most affected by climate change. Extreme events in weather conditions in the last 10 years are one of the most obvious reflections of global warming. Variations in temperature and precipitationPrecipitation regimes directly affect agriculture, water resourcesResource, biodiversity, etc. Climate changeClimate change is a serious threat, especially in countries such as TürkiyeTürkiye, with a dominant agricultural economy. For this purpose, in this study, (a) examples of extreme events in Türkiye will be given; (b) Türkiye's temperatureTemperature and precipitationPrecipitation conditions in the period 1929–2020 will be determined by analysing 217 meteorological observation data; (c) areas in Türkiye where the Mediterranean climate is dominant or not, according to the Emberger Bioclimate Classification; (d) future temperature and precipitationPrecipitation conditions will be determined based on 19 bioclimate variables obtained from the WorldClim database for the future 2061-2080 CMIP 5 model and RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The results obtained will be shared with public and non-governmental organizations in order to develop adaptation strategiesStrategy at national, regional and local levels to prevent the serious damage of climate changeClimate change to humans and the environmentEnvironments and ensure sustainable developmentDevelopment in changing climate conditions.

The ways in which the built environmentBuilt environment can impact the quality of life (QoL) tend to vary spatio-temporally. The entire debate revolving around the ability or inability of material assetsAssets and physical infrastructure to improve QoL has been gaining ground. A thorough review of the literature reveals that not only assets but the availability of select resourcesResource are equally important to improve QoL. However, such an assessment is lacking in the context of Asansol, the second largest urbanUrban agglomeration of West Bengal. This paper aims to analyse this theme in the context of Asansol Municipal Corporation by incorporating a ward-wise analysis based on material wellbeingWellbeing and the availability of select resourcesResource such as green spaces and blue spaces. The data presented has been obtained from secondary sources such as census records and LandsatLandsat imageries. A set of 23 indicators have been used following which various statistical analyses such as the calculation of HousingHousing Index, SanitationSanitation and Basic Amenities Index, Asset Index, Material Wellbeing Index, Correlation and principal component analysis have been carried out alongside NDBINormalized differential built-up index (NDBI), NDVINormalized differential vegetation index (NDVI), ARVI, MNDWI. It can be observed that a disparity exists within the wards and in general the QoL of the entire region is not very high. The results of this chapter might help the planners and policymakers devise or implement strategiesStrategy that aim to resolve micro-level disparities and could help the residents lead a better QoL.

The chapter investigates the pattern of land use transformationLand use transformation and water securityWater security in citiesCities from the global north and the global southGlobal south. The study considers Toronto and National Capital Territory Delhi (NCT Delhi) to investigate the approach and pattern of urbanUrban water management to meet the water demand with the changing land use transformation and built form intensificationBuilt form intensification. The chapter also recognises the different contexts and challengesChallenges experienced by the citiesCities of the two hemispheres. The motivation for the study comes with the global recognition of water as a crucial resourceResource for human sustenance and the opportunity to learn between the global north and south through a case study approach.

UrbanisationUrbanization has become a global phenomenon, characterised by the growth of cities which incorporate an increasing growthGrowth of population in the urban areas that represent more than half of the world’s population. In many developing countries, including India,India the rates of urban growthUrban growth have been higher than that for developed countries during their urban transition as the developing countries experienced higher rates of overall population growth. India witnessed a rapid urbanUrban transition with its urban populations increasing from 27.81% in 2001 to 31.16% in 2011, while 52.8% of the world population lived in cities in 2010. On a significant note, among the South Asian cities, IndiaIndia has witnessed a rapid growth of slumSlums population to the total urban population in the last few decades due to the rise of urbanisation in its citiesCities. The slumsSlums in India are the manifestation of rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization, urbanisationUrbanization of poverty and exclusionary and unequal processes existing in the cities of India, proportionately involve rural migrationMigration to informal settlementsInformal Settlement in and around the cities. The chapter examines the urban growthUrban growth and expansion of Guwahati cityGuwahati city, the only million-plus city of the Northeastern Region of IndiaIndia, the largest urbanUrban centre as well as the gateway to the Northeast India, a region lying on the cross-roads between India and South-east Asia. The chapter analyses the livelihood opportunitiesLivelihood opportunities and the emerging vulnerable situations and challengesChallenges in the slumSlums settlements of Guwahati cityCities of Assam.

Over the last few decades, Bangladesh with a large population is going through rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization to meet increasing demands. Anthropogenic activities enhance carbon emissions which ultimately trigger heat stressHeat stress in the cityCities areas. Habitats for new urbanised people and existing high-rise buildings have already created a scarcity of land. Therefore, one of the probable solutions considered by the researchers to minimise this heat stress is rooftop gardening (RTG). A systematic study has been performed on Dhaka cityDhaka city through a survey, Geographical Information SystemGeographical Information Systems (GIS) (GIS) analysis and Key Informant Interviews (KII). This research has identified existing rooftop gardens and potential rooftops for gardening and identified the factors that hinder the process of maintaining RTGRoof Top Garden (RTG). It has also explored the conditions that enable city dwellers to implement rooftop gardens in Dhaka cityDhaka city. Analysis showed that 38% of the rooftops were vegetated, and the other 62% of rooftops were non-vegetated which can be considered potential rooftops for making RTG. The temperatureTemperature difference between buildings with RTG and without RTGRoof Top Garden (RTG) was also measured and analysed through the discomfort index (DI). Several socio-economic barriers, weakness in city governanceCity governance and lack of environmental consciousness hinder the potential that a rooftop garden can offer. However, some people maintain rooftop gardens for socio-economic and environmental advantages. The research will help policymakers to plan a sustainable urban environmentEnvironments in Dhaka city.

The rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization and land use/land coverLand use land cover (LULC) changes have resulted in the unsustainable growthGrowth and rise in heat islands (UHIUrban Heat Island) in Indian cities. PalakkadPalakkad is one such city in Kerala, which is known for its relatively higher temperaturesTemperature than other parts of the state. Therefore, this study was designed to quantify the Land Surface TemperatureLand Surface Temperature (LST) (LST) dynamics of PalakkadPalakkad city in response to the LULC changeLanduse and landcover change during 2001–2021 using temporal Landsat datasetsLandsat dataset. Landsat Imagery 7 and 8 of 2001 and 2021 for summer and winter months were processed. The analytical outcomes reveal that mean LSTLand Surface Temperature (LST) for winter season was 27.07 °C during 2001 and that has increased to 28.35 °C during 2020. Whereas in summer, the mean LST that was 28.59 °C in 2001 has escalated to 29.32 °C during 2021. The results also display a significant decline in vegetation cover from 13.4 to 2.48 km2 and doubling of built-up areas, i.e. from 7.53 to 16.05 km2 during 2001–2021. Similarly, the areas under water bodies have shrunken from 2.18 to 1.14 km2 during 2001–2021. Further, the difference in the rise in the mean land surface temperatureLand Surface Temperature (LST) during the years 2020 and 2001 is more (1.99 °C) during summer season than winter season (1. 28 °C). Diurnal temperature range in LSTLand Surface Temperature (LST) between 2001 and 2020 LST has increased slightly during winters and decreased (−0.37 °C) during summers. Significant rise in day and night temperatureTemperature is likely in future under RCP 4.5 scenario. Due to this, a significant increase in urban heat islandUrban Heat Island (UHI) is seen for central, north-western, and north-eastern parts of the municipality. This type of micro-level research throws useful insights into the process of smart citySmart cities developmentDevelopment, policymaking and planning and heat island mitigation within the PalakkadPalakkad city limits. The drastic rise in urbanUrban settlements and reduction in green cover in the north-western parts requires urgent action plansAction plan as envisaged in India’sIndia NDCs and SDGsSustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for wellbeingWellbeing of the inhabitants.

Municipal waste managementMunicipal waste management (MWM) has become a worldwide ecological priority in the last two decades, attributed to the rising capacity of waste produced as a consequence of the developmentDevelopment of a mass consumer society. This study is emphasised to perceive the clusters of high and low waste generationWaste generation zones in the Patna Municipal CorporationPatna Municipal Corporation (PMC) and evaluate the geographical contributions of waste. Ward-wise municipal waste, population and area data were collected from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Government of Bihar’s Urban DevelopmentUrban Development and HousingHousing Department. Descriptive statistics of waste features were estimated through Microsoft excel. Geographical Information system was worn to investigate the geographical discrepancy of the waste types grouping at the micro-level. Cluster analysis is performed to demarcate the geographical cluster of waste generated based on the Getis-Ord Gi* statisticGetis-Ord Gi* statistic. Outcome of the research shows that the average rate per capita solid waste (SW) generation is 12.22 tonnes per day (TPD) ± 3.80 for the entire municipal corporation. Results also showed a strong positive correlation between total waste generationWaste generation and population number and meagre relation with the area. The high waste-generated clusters of the ward are found in the west of the PMC,Patna Municipal Corporation and low waste-generated cluster is observed in the central part of the PMC. Our results recommend that MWMMunicipal waste management should be well matched to the spatial characteristics of the ward in a conundrum.

Biomedical wastesBiomedical waste (BMW) are considered as potentially hazardous. Due to the rapidly changing scenario in health care and dynamic disease profile, the urgency is felt to evolve and implement waste management strategiesStrategy for safe, sustainable and cost-effective methods of BMW disposal. Though the pandemicPandemic has highlighted challengesChallenges of infectious waste management, scientific and universal BMW strategies are yet to take a structured form. This study attempts to investigate the trajectory of BMW from the source of generation to final treatment and disposal. Adopting the methodology of stratified sampling a comparative analysis of eight government hospitals in KolkataKolkata, this research seeks to highlight the adverse impact of the irrational treatment and disposal of BMWBiomedical waste on environmentEnvironments and social health. Waste auditsWaste audit conducted at the ward level facilitated documentation of different categories of wastes identified the source and quantum of each category. This quantitativeQuantitative evidence highlighted lack of compliance of the BMW Management Rules, 2016, and revealed lacunae throughout the waste chain. Occupational hazardsOccupational hazard of the stakeholders particularly of the rag pickers and the nexus of unauthorised commercialisationCommercialization of urbanUrban BMW pose sustainabilitySustainability challengesChallenges. The need of the hour is to find solutions which would bridge the gap between clinical sciences and social sciences. Advocacy for sustainable BMW management would formulate strategiesStrategy which would adhere to a resilient hospital ecosystem and maintain the delicate balance of environmental healthEnvironmental health and social justiceSocial justice, rather than merely emphasise on end-of-pipe technology solutions.

Climate changeClimate change and an increasingly urbanUrban population around the globe are impacting urban areas, making climatic shocks and stresses explicitly evident. Despite these threats to the urban fabric, metropolitan areas worldwide are the drivers of economic and cultural growthGrowth. The resilienceResilience of citiesCities and even their associated region is strongly impacted by the planning and governance of the city. The spatial scale of metropolitan regions is vital in bringing climate resilienceResilience to the larger region besides the city itself. Also, climate changeClimate change has widely varying effects on different socio-economic systems and populations. This chapter explores these differences through a comparative study of the metropolitan regions, the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (HMR) and the Surat cityCities region. Although the climatic hazards in the two regions are comparable, their institutional systems and resilienceResilience-building strategiesStrategy differ significantly. The chapter presents a comparative study of their institutional setup for resilience-building, outlining the varying adaptation approaches between developing and developed countries. The theoretical premise for the comparison is built on the existing literature on climate resilienceClimate Resilience for urbanUrban systems and tools/approaches for assessing institutional resilienceResilience-building capacities. The reciprocal understanding from the comparison highlight potential solutions to the gaps in climate change adaptation and contributes to developing an in-depth understanding of climate adaptation action in local contexts.

Municipal waste managementMunicipal waste management is growing to be the world’s greatest environmental issue. In this chapter, urbanUrban waste management was linked to sustainable developmentDevelopment in the cities of JohannesburgJohannesburg and NairobiNairobi. Using a comparative analysis of academic literature, the chapter explored the solid waste management practices and policiesPolicy the cities have implemented over time. In addition, the chapter made suggestions on the improvements that can be taken up to enhance sound solid waste management and ultimately, sustainable urbanUrban and environmental management. The results of the two case studies showed that municipal waste storage is rudimentary while waste collection and transportation to disposal areas are the most visible aspect of waste management. NairobiNairobi City lacked an engineered landfill facility while JohannesburgJohannesburg had four landfills. The local governments oversaw the provision of waste services. Environmental concerns due to mismanagement of the waste were pointed out in both case studies with waste pickers having direct exposure as they search for recyclables. A policy-action gap was evident due to non-cooperation of waste regulatory agencies and poor enforcement of laws hence their poor uptake. To enhance sustainable waste management in the cities the study recommended for a change of attitude toward waste recovery and a circular economy, cooperation of stakeholders and regulatory agencies, enforcement of waste management laws and improved infrastructure to deal with the growing demand for waste services. This is possible through public–private partnerships, action-based planning and local participation in waste management undertakings.

Green landscapes help and provide many environmental benefitsEnvironmental benefits that will improve the air qualityAir quality, water quality, biodiversity and habitat protection. The negative impact and pressure of an increase in population affect the environmentEnvironments locally, regionally and globally. Major environmental challengesChallenges which the cities are facing nowadays are the episodes of urban floods, urban heat, pollution, earthquakes, pandemicsPandemic, etc. It is agreed through different literature that green landscapes are essential for the wellbeingWellbeing of the people. Environmental strategiesStrategy for an urbanUrban area need to be supported by several factors that are biotic and abiotic. The ecosystem servicesEcosystem services in the cities and the chain of the ecosystem’s sustainabilitySustainability help to overcome the issues of environmental stresses in urban areas. Vegetation is considered one of the important biotic factors that immensely protects the environment and its surroundings in several ways. The density and spatial configuration of urban green landscapesUrban green landscapes like the canopy covers, buffers along the roads and patches of greens in between the built-up areas affect immediate environments and help in regulating the land surface temperaturesLand Surface Temperature (LST) and improve both local and city-wide urban air qualityAir quality. This chapter will focus on the different typologies and environmental services of urban green landscapesUrban green landscapes in Delhi. The green landscapes in Delhi are maintained by various organisations and that is mainstream at the levels of spatial plans. The Planning Norms have tried to mainstream green landscapes but still, the green landscapes are in process of incorporating the different current environmental challengesChallenges like Climate Change, Urban Heat IslandsUrban Heat Island effects and Air Pollution Management. Well-planned and designed green landscapes along different land useLand uses have positive impacts on the environment.

During pre-pandemic, tourist visits to the capital city of Bali grew by an annual average of 5%, and about 80% of them stayed in the Sanur. Increased tourismTourism visits and activities and land use changes for build multi-functional buildings tend to reduce the quality of the environmentEnvironments and ecosystem servicesEcosystem services, including carbon sequestration. In this study, we utilised Gross Primary ProductivityGross Primary Productivity (GPP) (GPP) as an indicator for measuring the urban green spaceUrban green space ecosystem service of its ability to capture total carbon assimilation of terrestrial ecosystems via photosynthesis. High spatial resolution satellite remote sensingRemote sensing data for 2006 and 2015 were employed in this chapter. The result stated that despite much green space (e.g. agriculture and mixed forest) has been converted into a built-up area for tourismTourism activity, the GPPGross Primary Productivity (GPP) was increased by 1067.47 tC/yr (i.e. 26%). Interestingly, the built-up area contributes about 40% of the GPP increase in the study area. As shown by GPPGross Primary Productivity (GPP), increasing vegetation ecosystem servicesEcosystem services was attributed mainly to the increased fraction of tree cover throughout the entire region, including the backyards and front yards maintained as multi-functional buildings for tourism activity between 2006 and 2015. This study also revealed that private sector involvement in urbanUrban greening significantly impacts the sustainable tourismTourism industry. In addition, this information is helpful for carbon resourceResource management, tourism, policy Policymaking and scholars concerned about carbon management in a tourism area.

Rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization, along with urbanUrban poverty, leads to social and environmental challengesChallenges that require cities to improve their resilienceResilience. Urban farmingUrban farming is promoted as an essential strategyStrategy for improving cities’ resilienceResilience by providing ecosystem servicesEcosystem services, namely strengthening the community, improving the urban environmentEnvironments and saving energy. The research aimed to estimate urban farmingUrban farming benefits in the context of ecosystem services in the monetary unit. It took place in Malang City, East Java–Indonesia, as a case study. The study utilised the Total Economic Value framework in conjunction with the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity concept to develop and estimate indicators of urban farmingUrban farming benefitBenefit into valuationValuation through the direct market and stated preferences approaches. The study employed field surveys, in-depth interviews and remote sensing analysisRemote sensing analysis. Here we show for the first time that the Total Economic Value of urban farming benefits reached up to US$ 13.11 in a square metre annually if all urban farmingUrban farming forms occupy a square metre each. However, this value had a gap with the benchmark of US$ 15.89/m2 annually. The gap value could be a policy recommendation to incentivise citizens to participate in emerging urban farming initiatives actively. This benefit value indicates that urban farmingUrban farming is feasible and valuable for further developmentDevelopment.

Rural-to-urban migrationUrban migration and increasing population has created urban agglomeration, particularly in metropolitan cities. This agglomeration creates pressure on cities which interrupts the city to become sustainable. Evaluation of the pattern of urban growthUrban growth pattern is a crucial task for a city’s long-term developmentDevelopment. The building footprint is one of the most important features of a city form to support urban management and developmentDevelopment. Previous studies show that high-resolution images are robust to extract building footprints using machine learningMachine learning algorithms. The main objective of this study is to extract the building footprint from the satellite imagery using machine learningMachine learning algorithms. In this study, Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery and support vector machine (SVM) linear and radial basis function (RBF) have been used to extract the building footprints in Kolkata metropolitan areaKolkata metropolitan area. In addition, both pixel-based and object-based image classification approaches have been applied and compared in this study. This result shows that in pixel-based image classification SVM linear gives a high accuracy than the SVM RBF. The accuracy level of SVM linear is 92.58% while Kappa is 0.89. On the other hand, object-based image analysis LULCLand use land cover classification has been done using the SVM MLMachine learning algorithm. In this image classification, the SVM RBF kernel type gives high accuracy. The overall accuracy of this OBIA image classification is 91.58% and the Kappa is 0.87. For the building extractionBuilding extraction in an urban area from the medium-resolution image Sentinel 2 using a machine learningMachine learning algorithm with high accuracy gives a significant approach. Policymakers and planners can develop the city sustainably from this building footprint in an urbanUrban region and use sustainable urban planningSustainable Urban Planning to achieve the Sustainable Development GoalSustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The integrationBuilding Information Modeling of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information SystemGeographical Information Systems (GIS) (GIS) and the suggested notion of digital twinsDigital twins enabled buildings to be energy-efficient in terms of consumption and generation. The study employs a real-world simulation with a low level of detail to examine several types of urban superblocksUrban super- Block and their energy use. This research presents a unique approach for integrating urban information based on two-dimensional GIS data and a three-dimensional BIMBuilding Information Modeling model. The research approach used in this study is a comparison of the types of urban blocks and energy, which is considered for early energy studies instead of optimising the urban configuration. Several archetypesArchetype of blocks were modelled, analysed and then studied on three levels: electrical energy, fossil fuel and energy. The study’s conclusion implies that optimisation techniques can be used in the comparative approach. While studying these various methods consumes a significant amount of time and energy, archetype evaluation consumes far less. Finally, the results reveal significant reductions in energy use in urban buildings of up to 20% compared to the ASHRAE standard model with a modest degree of detail. The results of this research may be used in the early stages of urban design in terms of superblock pattern selection.

Thermal comfortThermal Comfort can be defined as the state of people feeling comfortable/happy in their environmentEnvironments. This study is aimed to explain the distribution of thermal comfort conditions in the city of Van, which is a historical cityCities with a high altitude established on the shores of Lake Van. In the study, the data of three meteorology stations was evaluated according to the physiological equivalent temperature (PETPhysiological Equivalent Temperature (PET)) index, and their spatial distribution was explained by taking into account many variables related to the field with Geographical Information Systems (GIS)Geographic Information Systems (GIS). As a result of the study, cold stress perceptionsPerception were dominant in the city from November to March, and “slightly warm” and “warm” stresses were dominant in the summer season. During the transition seasons, “slightly cool” stress and “comfortable” conditions are effective. Due to urbanisationUrbanization, it has been observed that city centres have different thermal comfortThermal Comfort conditions compared to the rural and semi-rural areas around them, and the thermal conditions of the cityCities have slightly milder characteristics than the effect of Lake Van. For sustainable urbanisation, it is necessary to make urbanUrban design and planning with a geographical perspective that takes into account human, ecological and physical conditions.

Disaster managementDisaster management essentially encompasses measures for safeguarding people from disasters and reducing the possibility of hazards arising. On 4 December 2021, Semeru Volcano experienced increased volcanic activities and produced hot clouds and lava with a sliding distance of up to 16 km towards Besuk Kobokan in the southeast sector, resulting in human casualties and damage to property and infrastructure. The hot cloud bed and shouts on 4 December 2021 expanded to the Supiturang and Sumberwuluh villages, 11–16 km from the summit. The assessment was carried out by aerial photography using drones. Furthermore, due to the vast affected coverage area and limited human and financial resourceResource from the authorities, the damage and loss assessment processes adopted the geospatial artificial intelligenceGeospatial artificial intelligence method in detecting rapidly damaged urbanUrban facilities. To facilitate communication among stakeholders for a rapid response, this study utilised the Internet of ThingsInternet of things (IoT) method for urban recovery planning and managementUrban recovery planning and management. At the end of the activity, a smart emergency dashboard was built to support decision-making by the local and national governments. This study showed that the use of GeoAI, IoTInternet of things (IoT) and geostatistical visual analysis accelerates evacuation processes compared to conventional methods for minimising the number of disaster victims.

Heritage is not just something associated with the past but also something that connects us with our present and accompanies us into the future. Heritage always calls for inclusion, but the inclusionary aspect of heritage is often underpinned when it comes to developmentDevelopment. In the colonial townColonial town of Chandernagore, the urban expansion and fast rise of multi-storey buildings have begun to threaten the existence of urban-heritageUrban-heritage structures at an alarming rate. In Chandernagore, one of the oldest municipal corporations of West Bengal, the urbanUrban and historic realms are inextricably linked. The study will attempt to map the co-existing colonial heritage units within the urban spaceUrban space and will try to explore the underlying causes of the conflict between heritage and urban planningUrban planning. The major goals of the chapter are to find out ward-wise changing density of population on the basis of prior literature, decadal census data; delineate of spatio-temporal change of land use and land coverLand use land cover (LULC) over a span of almost 40 years (1982–2022) using supervised image classification approach with maximum likelihood classification and corroborating it with corresponding Google Earth images; and understand citizen’s perspective about the recent trend of urbanisation involving qualitative methods like key informant interviews, transect walk, passive observation and contextual interviews. If urbanUrban concerns are adequately addressed, the cityCities has every chance of becoming a viable, sustainable heritage cityCities. The action planAction plan formulated on the basis of the study findings hopes to offer interesting insights to the planners and conservations to rethink and recognise the plurality of the heritage values through comprehensive up-scaling heritage initiatives.

Rapid urbanisationRapid urbanization, pollution and inadequate public transit have made mobility more complex, plaguing people worldwide. UrbanUrban and Transport planners face a considerable challengeChallenges with the vision of future smart citiesFuture smart cities as it focuses on creating a more cohesive transportation ecosystem for congested citiesCities. The new advancements in mobility with digital innovations and updated real-time data sources supported by data and models will help design an efficient transport system through a thorough understanding of human mobility. However, conducting conventional travel surveys is expensive, with limited sample sizes. Detailed information on travel patterns and the actual demand for travel is hard to get today. Cellular network data collected using the existing infrastructure of mobile operators is a promising new data source and an optimal source to analyse the individual’s mobility pattern. Researchers have utilised passively collected data, such as vehicle global positioning system (GPS), mobile network data including call details record (CDR) and Google location history, to define individual travel behaviour patterns. The chapter produces condensed reviews of previous case examples that have adopted similar analytic approaches that involve mobile data aggregation to glean travel information. This study may help researchers and transport authorities understand the potential of mobile phone dataMobile phone data as an alternate and more frequently updated data source for future smart citiesFuture smart cities with several key inferences and the challengesChallenges associated with the data. This chapter recommends the framework for data processing and their associated algorithms to understand the mobility pattern using mobile phone dataMobile phone data.

Freight transport has many challengesChallenges in urban mobilityUrban Mobility. Goods vehicles are designed with an objective to maximise the capacity of the vehicle; as a result, the dimensions of goods vehicles are more and speed of vehicles is less. As the vehicles are big in size, they occupy more PCUs on the road resulting in reduction of road capacities and they also block the visibility of comparatively smaller passenger vehicles. As the goods vehicles are not designed for higher speeds, slow-moving goods vehicles retard the movement of passenger vehicles on roads leading to congestion and queuing of other vehicles behind the slow-moving vehicle. The congestion and reduced speeds increase the travel time of all vehicles, and this results in economic and financial losses for all public, private and goods vehicles. In this backdrop, the study aims to analyse the issues related to transport of goods vehicles in urban areas and to identify alternatives which can improve the efficiency of freight transport in urbanUrban areas. The cityCities of Vijayawada is a trading and commercial hub of Andhra Pradesh with a well-connected railway network and a road network with two national highways passing through the city and connected through the air by an international airport located at Gannavaram 20 km from the city. All the agriculture products from surrounding areas of the fertile delta formed by the Krishna River are traded and exported to other parts of the country from Vijayawada. Apart from this, the cityCities also acts as a junction for North–South and East coast corridors connecting major cities like Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Bangalore and Machilipatnam which brings a significant amount of freight traffic to the city on a daily basis. The huge freight volume flowing through the cityCities every day causes hindrance to city traffic causing delays, congestion, pollution and safety threats to road users of the cityCities but the movement of goods vehicles is an important aspect to keep the trade activity uninterrupted. The city lags in infrastructure for handling freight such as parking areas, loading/unloading, bypassing, and weighing. In this context, the study aims to improve the traffic scenario of Vijayawada by developing an efficient freight distribution plan in the cityCities that strategies upon the network improvement for freight and suggests appropriate land useLand use developmentDevelopment and decentralises the freight functions of the city.

In today’s competitive environmentEnvironments, assessing service quality has emerged as a strategic instrument for enhancing efficiency and persuading users to opt for the service. But the service provider’s challengeChallenges is ascertaining the commuter perceptionCommuter Perception, especially on qualitative aspects of perceived service quality. In public transport, a comprehensive service quality assessmentService quality assessment (SQA) framework has proven effective in assessing service performance when ‘commuter perceptionCommuter Perception’ is the measuring unit of service quality. Most developing countries, including IndiaIndia, struggle to actively incorporate commuter perspectives when assessing the qualitative aspects of service quality. To aid, social media data can prove to be a game shift in this modern digital era to offer an insight into the commuter perceptionPerception of service delivery. The chapter aims to incorporate social media data for integrating qualitative aspects based on commuters’ perceptionsPerception into the public transport SQAService quality assessment framework for the Delhi metro. The study extracts Twitter data, performs semantic and sentiment analysisSentiment analysis to comprehend commuters’ concerns and assesses commuters’ sentiments on the predicted concerns. Further, the service performance score is calculated using a weighted SERVPERF scale, and an Importance-Performance analysis is performed to identify the priority areas. The benefitBenefit of this method is twofold; first, it allows for establishing a real-time feedback structure that benefits both the service provider and commuters, and second, it allows for the periodic assessment of commuters’ perceptionsPerception of service delivery.

Conventional practice for geometric highway design using engineering drawing techniques and mathematical approaches demands heavy iterative manual efforts amidst numerous calculations, which is cumbersome and time consuming. Consequently, it is challenging highway engineers to approach for a broader perspective on geometric design. Given rising trends for advancing intelligent transportationIntelligent transportation systems for smart, sustainable and climate-resilient citiesCities, a need is felt for developing web application tools for swift and accurate highway design. To this end, present study aims at developing a computer-based conceptual geometric design model called Web Application Tool for Highway Design (WAT-HD) for highway projects using HTML web application-based programming. The software tool comprehensively accounts for designing highway cross-sectional elements, sight distance, horizontal alignment and vertical alignment, along with their detailed components. A comparative assessment of findings from the tool with manual calculations for a two-lane two-way National Highway indicates its high designing accuracy amidst minimal input requirements. The study concludes that computer-based programming approaches could be more efficient while designing highway geometry with ease to modify within economic and environmental parameters. Such applications become more pronounced when pressure is more on achieving goals of smart citySmart cities design, intelligent urbanUrban transportation and reduced vehicular-emission-based greenhouse gas release amidst changing climate.

Economic mobilisation of wireless connectivity has brought a nascent change in the functioning of citiesCities and will soon rule the future. In the age of increasing availability of wireless cloud technologies, smartphone applicationsSmartphone applications have become an integral part of our daily life, offering myriad opportunities to simplify our lives and influencing our everyday decisions; transforming urban mobilityUrban Mobility by providing a wide array of information like real-time public transit arrival predictions, multi-modal trip-planning apps, availability of parking, real-time data on traffic, etc. The mobility apps are rapidly challenging the conventional travel pattern and generating new patterns and travel behaviour. Therefore, this chapter produces a condensed review of the endless opportunities IoTInternet of things (IoT) can bring for a better tomorrow through various mobile apps and how policyPolicy measures can reinforce the benefitsBenefit in the following approaches of these apps. It will also highlight how the transportation apps may impact the travel choices of people in IndiaIndia and the challengesChallenges associated with transport authorities, service providers and other stakeholders. The study intends to use the mixed explanatory method with comparative studies of various citiesCities using mobility apps and how they function in isolation without any integration. Integration in tangible entities like fare, modes, schedules, etc., has long been emphasised, but digital integration can bring forward momentum in achieving multiple goals of a successful transport system. The chapter will end with several key inferences, recommendations and suggestions to help researchers and transport authorities consider the role of mobile apps in our transportation network.

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemicCOVID-19 hasPandemic forced many countries implement social restrictions, including Indonesia. There has been a growing interest in understanding the impact of the pandemicPandemic on air qualityAir quality. This research analyses the air pollution before and after the COVID-19 pandemicPandemic in Jakarta and Banjarmasin, Indonesia, with a detailed analysis. It compared the results with previous years to determine the significant improvement in air quality and related weather factors obtained from Landsat 8 and 9 imagery. OMIOzone monitoring Instrument (OMI) and MERRA-2 were analysed for PM2.5, NO2, SO2, O3 and WRF-ChemWRF-Chem model result especially for PM2.5 against thePandemic COVID-19 pandemicCOVID-19. As a result, there was a decrease in PM2.5 during the pandemic year in Jakarta, although it was not as good as in 2016 conditions. In Jakarta and Banjarmasin, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2 decreased in 2021 from 2020, which were in line with the high incidence of COVID-19 in 2021. This shows that more air qualityAir quality increased in the form of healthy days in DKI Jakarta in 2020 than in 2019. In other words, there was an increase in air qualityAir quality during the implementation Large-Scale Social Restriction (PSBB) policy in 2020 compared to 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemicPandemic.

The present study focuses on the quantitativeQuantitative investigation of economic vulnerabilityVulnerability and assesses the perception surveyPerception survey carried out among 75 residents of Katwa Municipality, an up-growing urbanUrban area in Purba Barddhaman District, West Bengal. To estimate the socio-economic vulnerability during the lockdownLockdown, standardised factor scores have been calculated in the analysis of principal components and GISGeographical Information Systems (GIS)-based mapping has been employed also. Among the total working population of the surveyed household, about 20% have changed their occupation, wages have been reduced by 35 and 35% have lost their occupation during the lockdownLockdown period. The highly socio-economic vulnerabilityVulnerability has been observed in the wards where households and population are also high. The regression coefficient shows that the increasing trend of marginal other workers has the significantly (p < 0.1) highest marginal effect on the socio-economic vulnerability. The Likert scale measuring perceptionPerception indicated that the majority of the respondents agreed with their socio-economic vulnerabilitiesVulnerability caused by lockdownLockdown during the pandemicPandemic situation. The significant outcome of the study indicates the initiation of diversified income generation opportunities and deliberates its contribution to the formation of location-specific planning for the socio-economic developmentDevelopment and integrative management of the study area.

With ninety percent of COVID-19 reported cases from urbanUrban areas, the urban world became an epicenter of the pandemicPandemic. A technology-driven approach was followed by Chinese cities had managed to keep the transmission in control. However, in Western countries, a human-driven approach was followed to combat the pandemicPandemic. The cities of global southGlobal south were relatively more challenged in terms of technology as well as human-driven approaches. Likewise Indian cities too faced additional problems like inadequate infrastructure facilities. The pandemicPandemic aftermath did lay bare the disparities among different population groups, particularly the vulnerable ones who had been dually hit by low income as well as weak social and economic coverage. Though a multitude of research has been done on the general impact of pandemicPandemic, a limited number of research outpourings were observed on the impact of pandemicPandemic on the ‘third space’. As a critical component of social distancing all the ‘communal hangout spots’ like park, local markets and gyms were forced to shut down during a pandemicPandemic which critically altered the social infrastructure. The study aimed to understand of the impact of pandemicsPandemic on urban life, with a focus on the ‘third spaces’, in the selected Indian citiesCities. The methodology was integrated research review which included research output from popularly used database of scientific articles as well as government reports, documents, etc. This chapter questions how these spaces are perceived and how the perceptionPerception changed during the outbreak.