DATA

The Cooum River, once a sacred river that shaped the history of Madras, has now become a sad sign of urban degradation. For the millions of residents in Chennai, it has transformed into a malodorous, polluted, and stagnant channel, burdened with solid waste accumulation and extensive encroachments along its banks. During a recent datajam organised by Oorvani Foundation and OpenCity, we used Geographical Information System (GIS) datasets and population analytics to investigate the underlying causes contributing to this crisis. The results show that rapid urbanisation, inadequate provision of essential civic infrastructure, and the absence of coherent policy frameworks, along with…

Mumbai's P/North Ward is a climate paradox. On a map, it looks green, boasting significant cover from the Sanjay Gandhi National Park to the east and vital mangroves to the west. Yet, the reality on the ground for its nearly one million residents is one of scorching heat. The surfaces people walk and live on have heated dramatically, with land surface temperatures soaring by over 5°C in much of this ward between 2015 and 2024. The reason is a familiar story of urban expansion: rapid, unplanned growth has replaced cooling ecosystems with a dense fabric of concrete, tin, and asphalt,…

Mumbai's M/East Ward, a sprawling peripheral area including Mankhurd, Govandi, Deonar, Trombay and Chembur, embodies a tale of two cities. It is a vital economic engine, home to major industrial facilities such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Tata Power, RCF and HPCL. At the same time, it lies on the city's fringe where its unseen have been pushed over decades, from the mountains of waste at the Deonar landfill to the marginalised communities resettled in its cramped colonies. Our study on the impact of rising urban temperatures reveals just how this deep-seated inequality is baked into the very…

Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are areas within cities that experience significantly higher temperatures than their rural counterparts due to human activities, concretisation, and lack of vegetation. Bengaluru, the fifth most populous metropolis (Census of India, 2011) and one of the rapidly growing cities in India, is no exception. In the last two decades, the city has seen a rapid rise in built-up area from 37.4% to 93.3%. The pressure of urbanisation has not only affected the natural and ecological resources but is also impacting the city’s livability because of rising temperature levels. Unlike sudden disaster events like landslides or floods,…

Bengaluru’s air quality has been seriously worsening post COVID. The annual levels of PM10 saw a decline between 2018 and 2021, but has been slowly increasing since then. Government authorities say that the air quality in Bengaluru is better compared to other cities. But while the PM2.5 levels may conform to the national standards, according to a Greenpeace report it is still four to nine times higher than WHO standards. There is thus a huge need for improvement. The city, however, has used very little of the clean air funds received under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). Also non-utilisation…

As Bengaluru struggles with an ongoing water crisis, it reports a shortage of about 500 million litres of water every day. The significant water problem in the city is frequently blamed on insufficient rainfall, unregulated groundwater exploitation, and environmental negligence. However, it is essential to investigate water contamination, notably from sewage and industrial effluents, as a major cause of the water crisis. The focus then moves to Shivpura Lake in the Peenya Industrial Area.  Although a key industrial area, Peenya is neglected, as evidenced by its poor infrastructure and pollution issues. Shivpura Lake, in particular, is contaminated by the surrounding…

In December 2023, many parts of Chennai received record-breaking rains for two days. Though the event of cyclone occurrence was the same throughout the city, the capacity to recover from the aftermath was not the same for all. Experts say the reasons for this recovery variability could be attributed to infrastructure resilience such as sewage treatment capacity, water supply, water holding capacity of reservoirs and waterbodies encroachment. These physical parameters are intensified by the socio-economic status such as the livelihood, income levels, social status of people and assets across different parts of Chennai. Here, it is important to look at…

According to the recently released 2023 Bengaluru Crime Data, there is a significant gap between reported and detected crimes in the city.  In 2023, 12,627 cases of total crimes were reported, of which only 3,603 crimes were detected. This shows a gap of 71.48% between reported and detected cases. From 2022 to 2023, there seems to have been a 36% rise in crimes across the city, driven by various motives. However, sudden and grave provocation topped the list for motives. “We can never definitely say that crime has increased or decreased, because crime is always there, only the trend in…

In the first of this two-part series, we discussed the quality of the building plans sanction dataset on the BBMP website. The data is potentially crucial in informing, visualising and guiding the built-form in the city. Thus, the imperative to streamline and quality-check the data collation exercise cannot be over emphasised. In the second part, we illustrate the insights from this data. The publicly available data was used to understand the direction and typology of built growth expansion across time at the city, zonal and ward scale. These insights, we argue, are critical inputs for planning and managing the city.…

After a steady reduction from 2017 to 2020, the city witnessed an increase in waste collection from 5500 Metric Tonnes per day (MTD) in 2020-21 to 6300 MTD in 2021-22, says a report released by Praja Foundation. The highest contributor is wet (food) waste which comprises 73% of the total garbage collected at the landfills. The report on the status of civic issues in Mumbai, highlighted challenges in solid waste management, sewerage and water bodies. Moreover, due to the deteriorating sanitisation facilities, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) failed the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) 5-Star Rating of 'Garbage Free Cities' in…