Determinants of sustainability and prosperity in Indian cities
Introduction
Sustainability of cities is a primary concern of the modern world due to the bulge in the urban population, especially in the developing world. The challenge is likely to be severe in India, as an estimated 404 million people are likely to be added to the urban areas by 2050, which would be the highest among all the countries (United Nation -Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2014). Moreover, it is believed that cities can lead the way in implementing local solutions for the global problem of sustainability (UN-Habitat, 2012). All these point towards the importance of incorporating sustainable development in the nation's urban development strategy. There is also a need to develop a mechanism to review and monitor the progress made in the urban sustainability front.
In this front, United Nations passed its 2030 Agenda, which contain 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the member countries. Among them, the 11th Goal is to make the cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable (UN-Habitat, 2016b). According to McKinsey and Company (2010), a continuation of the current policies could lead to an urban gridlock in India. It is essential to find the determinants of sustainability to create a suitable plan for the cities. There are factors both external and internal to the city, which are responsible for city sustainability. It is crucial to decipher these factors and incorporate them in the urban policy agenda. However, India is yet to develop a SDG strategy for its cities (NITI Aayog, 2017).
In the first phase of the study, we develop two prosperity indices (CPI and CPIx) based on the SDG framework. Two indices use different approaches to obtain weights of the dimensions and check whether the score obtained by both the methods are the same. The original city prosperity index is developed by adding the governance dimension in the city sustainability measurement. We further develop a city sustainability index (CSIx) that does not include the governance dimension. In the second phase of the study, we check whether the factors affecting sustainability (CSIx) and prosperity (CPIx) are the same. We study whether the determinants of sustainability is due to the factors beyond a city's control, such as environmental factor or do the individual city politics and policies influence the score? While developing the index, we confine our analysis to large Indian UAs with 1 million populations and above. The three-tier hierarchical model of CPI assumes equal weight to all the dimensions. Given the drawbacks of the approach (OECD, 2008; Wong, 2015), we propose the use of a data-driven approach of Standard Deviation (SD) to find the weights of the components (CPIx). The prosperity indicators are derived directly from the dataset. In the case of non-availability of data, appropriate proxies are chosen. To develop the CSIx index, we employ the CPIx methodology. Accordingly, a catalogue of cities of India is developed to measure the composite index.
The prosperity index (CPIx) contains 37 cities and 39 indicators. The sustainability index (CSIx) contains 37 cities and 37 indicators, as two governance indicators are excluded. One of the criticisms of the index approach is that it is “indicator rich but information poor” (Akande, Cabral, Gomes, & Casteleyn, 2019). To address this issue, we propose the use of multiple regression to find the relevant factors that impact prosperity (CPIx) and sustainability (CSIx). The goal is twofold, finding the relevant factors and also find whether there is any difference in factors affecting prosperity (CPIx) and sustainability (CSIx). We hypothesize that several external factors and local efforts contribute to the determination of city sustainability. We use the same hypothesized factors affecting sustainability in the determination of prosperity. We have selected the variables from the theoretical and economic geographic literature. Understanding the rationales of external and local policies could help identify the binding constraints in promoting sustainable growth. Multiple linear regression models are used to test our hypothesis. Our research is influenced by Hu and Wang (2019), which studied the inclusiveness disparities among Chinese cities and their potential causes. However, the focus of our study is on the factors affecting sustainability and prosperity. The present study contributes to the body of knowledge in four ways. First, we are the first to develop sustainability indices for Indian cites based on SDGs of United Nations. Moreover, the index generated by us is more comprehensive than that of the UN CPI database as the number of indicators and sub-dimensions considered is higher. Second, there is no UA based database for Indian cities; for the first time, we created a UA based record. Hence, the results of the study are comparable to the world cities. Third, we showed the importance of fixing the weights of the dimension by proposing a data-driven approach in determining the weights of the index and comparing it with the equal weight method of CPI. Fourth, the present study is one of the earliest to find the most relevant factors in determining the disparity in sustainability and prosperity measures in Indian cities. Meanwhile, we also check whether the factors affecting prosperity is similar to that of sustainability. The result of this study will help urban planners to comprehend sustainable development and its implication on urban management in a better manner.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a literature review of various sustainability city indices and methodological drawbacks. Section 3 deals with the research methodology including the development of CPI, CPIx and CSIx indices and determinants of city sustainability and prosperity. Section 4 concludes the paper.
Section snippets
Literature review
There are three different scales of urban sustainability assessment models - micro, mezzo, and macro. The downside is that the results obtained are reliable only at the scale of the model (Yigitcanlar, Dur, & Dizdaroglu, 2014). The selection of suitable indicators for making an informed decision on sustainable urban development is another significant area of research (Anand, Winfred Rufuss, Rajkumar, & Suganthi, 2017; Pupphachai & Zuidema, 2017). Even though the concept of sustainable
Methodology
The methodology to identify the forces behind city sustainability and prosperity has two phases. The first phase deals with the development of city prosperity indices, and the second phase involves development of city sustainability index and finding the determinants of sustainability and prosperity (see Fig. 1). The first phase starts with the selection of variables/indicators based on the dimensions and sub-dimension of CPI. Based on the methodology employed to find the weights of the
Conclusions
In this study, we attempt to develop a data driven composite index of city sustainability in line with the SDGs of the United Nations. We have also explored whether the determinants of sustainability (CSIx) and prosperity (CPIx) are similar in Indian cities by considering theoretical and economic geographical variables. To overcome the biases in determining the weights of the dimensions in city prosperity index (CPI), we developed another index called the CPIx index. The analysis of the score
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the funding given by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India for the Project Titled: “Urban Governance: Sustainable Policies and Implementation (USP)", sanction letter number- F.NO. 4–22/2014-TS.I. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of Government of India, or the institute they represent.
Abhishek N completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. His broad areas of interest is sustainability of Indian cities. His current research interests include data analysis, sustainable growth and simulation modeling.
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Abhishek N completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. His broad areas of interest is sustainability of Indian cities. His current research interests include data analysis, sustainable growth and simulation modeling.
Mamata Jenamani is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. She obtained her Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur. She is a recipient of the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in Enterprise Application of Internet Technology. Her broad areas of interest is information system and e-business. Her current research interest include e-procurement, auctions, and the application of information technologies to supply chain systems. She is a member of the Association for Information Systems.
Prof. Biswajit Mahanty has obtained his B.Tech (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering and his M.Tech and PhD degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management-all from IIT Kharagpur. To the present, Prof. Mahanty has had a rich and varied professional career with over six years of industrial experience and 30 years of teaching, research, and industrial consulting work experience. His areas of interest are system dynamics, operations research, information systems and supply chain management. Prof. Mahanty has guided 12 doctoral and a large number of undergraduate and post-graduate level dissertations. His publications have appeared in a number of peer-reviewed international journals. Apart from IIT Kharagpur, He has also taught in the school of Management at AIT, Bangkok for a brief period.