Livability is the degree to which a place is suitable for living. Globally there is no standard livability index followed within or across nations. However, all studies and Global liveability index trackers broadly follow around 30 indicators under seven themes:
Urban Livability indicators under 7 themes:
1) Stability, assessed by safety and security from crimes; 2) Public Transportation assessed by walkability, cyclability, availability and accessibility (a&a) to affordable transportation; 3) Infrastructure assessed by road networks, 4) Open spaces and public spaces assessed by a&a to public parks and spaces for community activities; 5) Healthcare, assessed by a&a of affordable public and private healthcare; 6) Culture & Environment assessed by local weather & socio-cultural restrictions; 7) Education assessed by & and inclusion in affordable pvt and public education; 8) Employment assessed by availability of inclusive job opportunitiesFor Indian cities grappling with rapid urbanization, which has exacerbated inequalities, livability has become questionable, especially for the city’s marginalized communities.
The challenge: Livability affects all. But Informal Settlement and Resettlement Residents (ISRRs) in the cities are the most affected and their needs are overlooked
India's urban population has grown exponentially. This past decade, urbanization in India, i.e movement of people to urban centres, has witnessed a 4% rise to 377 million people currently living in cities. As substantiated by multiple data, this amounts to a third of the Indian population living in urban centres who contribute to 90% of the national tax revenues[1]. This unplanned and unprecedented rapid growth in population density, while straining the cities' resources and infrastructure, most significantly affects informal settlement residents (ISR) who constitute ~17-30% of the Indian urban population[2].
These informal settlements were once labour colonies or rural villages, which are now engulfed into the urban fabric only to transform into slums. In today’s modern cities, informal settlements also emerge along buffer zones by the river beds for example or on urban voids and incidental spaces. But most of these newly formed fringe settlements are not legally recognised as they are considered encroachments, albeit formed due to lack of space or affordability or planning. Nevertheless, even the legally recognised informal settlements are extremely inadequately serviced:
Besides these, ISRs in the cities also grapple with the fundamental roof-over-head housing issue of whether their slum is a notified / unnotified (identified) / registered slum, or a squatter settlement, which has implications on the right to their eviction or resettlement[3]. Furthermore, those resettled to the city fringes as an outcome of development at the city centres, lack access to basic amenities such as grocery shops or vegetable vendors or public transportation. These learnings were qualitatively substantiated in our recent study assessing the needs of the ISRRs of Bengaluru, a cosmopolitan megacity in South India.
The study and related projects also revealed that a key under service the ISRRs put up with, which greatly impacts their daily routine is, public transportation.
Indian cities have government-operated buses, metros and monorails. Yet various challenges within them make the service inadequate for the city population. Consequently, ISRRs are forced to walk long distances or stretch their expenses to spend on non-regulated intermediate public transport services as first mile to access the public bus, and last mile to reach final destination. Many bus routes do not serve the tertiary roads where the informal settlements are located. Bus shelters are not well equipped and so unusable or not available in places where buses stop. And, neither the bus shelters nor the buses are easily accessible to persons with disabilities. These accessibility and availability problems restrict their movement and timely access to survival needs such as places of livelihood, education or healthcare.
If you are a reader from the middle or high-income group, pause to reflect on the 7 themes of livability indices, and how they are fair for your house and life in your city?
From good housing, public safety, and infrastructure to transportation, public systems are shared by all, across income groups. So the inadequacy of public services that impacts livability in the city, extends to those from medium and high income groups as well. However, most have the capability to find alternative service options, such as bikes, cars, cabs or comfortable cycles in lieu of public transportation and to manage bad roads, tanker lorries in lieu of ground water, air purifiers for degrading air, all of which the ISRRs cannot always afford to. As a result of this inadequacy in basic public services to ISRRs, they lack the capability to stay socially and economically resilient, making them most vulnerable to disasters such as climate change effects which a city might face. While responses to damages from a disaster are usually incusive and immediate in catering to citizen needs, the routine governance practices and policies meant to manage the varying urban needs and living standards regularly overlook the needs of the marginalised communities such as the ISRRs.
Late last year, at a convening in Bengaluru, called Who are cities built for? Isaac Arul Selva, a human rights activist with a focus on urban marginalised communities, articulately shed light on this historically patterned neglect of informal settlements, stating:
Not just Bengaluru. This is most likely the case across Indian cities.
Navigating the challenge: Design cities for the marginalised and the vulnerable ISRRs. It will benefit all
While designing solutions to common problems such as livability in a city, targeting the needs of the most marginalised and vulnerable can lead to not only reducing marginalisation and vulnerability but also benefiting everyone, including those at the top of the pyramid.
This approach we believe, is the way forward to improve livability for all in Indian cities.
Designing for the most marginalised and vulnerable in Indian cities, does not merely involve a shift in design approach. It requires changing behaviours, beliefs and routines of common citizens, city stakeholders and decision makers alike, away from current neglectful practices. Along with systemic transformations within city governing departments, towards an inclusive decision making process.
While this may sound exhaustive, the channels to make these behvioural and systemic shifts are already present, albeit not sufficiently frequent. These already existing channels are the opportunities waiting to be seized to enhance urban livability in India.
Seize the opportunities: Strengthen existing channels that make the voices of the marginalised and vulnerable ISRRs heard and included. Invest in transforming non-inclusive systems and mindsets.
Indian cities and city systems were built on democratic values. And hold ample opportunities that if effectively leveraged, can rapidly uplift the marginalised and the vulnerable, while benefitting all across socio-economic sections living in the cities.
Deriving from the learnings from the work by Auom Impact and Consulting (previously called Insomanywords consulting), here we share a few behavioural and systems-level leverage points. Where, when intervened, could rapidly nurture inclusive decision-making that would sustainably transform livability in Indian cities:
1.(Re)Activate Ward Committee Meetings: The Constitution 74th Amendment Act (1992) in its section 243 S provides for setting up of ward committees to decentralise powers and authorities and ensure citizen participation in decision making. Thereby bringing the decision makers and the citizens together[4]. Yet, a significant number of these municipal wards are inactive. Activating these citizen engagement platforms might have to be one of the priorities to sustain the already institutionalised participatory governance process. 2. Promote civic participation among citizens: Behaviourally, a platform (a tool) created for citizen engagement, is alone not sufficient to foster citizen participation (a behaviour). It is imperative to capacitate city residents from across various income brackets, on articulating their requirements, concerns, and appreciation effectively. They need to be empowered and maybe incentivised to participate, voice and ensure consistent attendance at ward committee meetings. 3. Deliberately encourage inclusive participation at ward committee meetings: Given the social norms and cultural practices followed, achieving inclusivity or equity in citizen participation is the most challenging. But interventions could start with most feasible options such as improving spatial accessibility and creating digital and non-digital invites encouraging all marginalised groups to participate to voice their needs and concerns.
4. Go beyond ward committee meetings. Use innovative methods to explore other ways of participatory and inclusive governance: Last year (2023), as the Learning Partner for Alli Serona, we contributed to an impactful transformation. Along with ISRR women from 9 communities in Bengaluru, Alli Serona conducted audits of 8 bus stops representing the 9 communities.
The audit results along with their demands for public bus routes were presented to the governing authorities. Nevertheless, in order to make the voices of the ISRRs widely heard and attract attention to their mobility needs, the collective and the women co-designed a bus stop installation that was moved across 4 locations, stationed at each location for 2-3 days. At each location, thousands of men women, children, adolescents and persons with disabilities from the informal settlement communities participated to cast their vote for a bus stop and the bus routes they needed.
This installation also served as a platform for citizens to engage and present their demands with the 19+ city officials who visited the installation. Their voices were heard. At the time of the end of our engagement, 2 out of 5 bus routes demanded by the ISRRs were activated, transforming the daily lives and livelihood of many in those communities!
Using similar creative and innovative methods, one can find opportunities beyond ward meetings, to bring together citizens and decision-makers at an equal and inclusive platform, for conversations and actions. Such platforms and methods, if institutionalised in the decision-making process, will have the potential to sustain and transform civic actions as we know it.
5. Encourage creative participatory solutions through collaborations between decision-makers and other city stakeholders - such as academicians, CSOs and private entities: Livability is a collective problem that requires collective action. From select urban local bodies (ULBs) to academicians, CSOs and common citizens, many independent innovations and initiatives are operating in silos towards improving various indices of livability. It is time for the city corporations to recognise these opportunities and find pathways to bring together all the individual solutions to work towards a collective intention and implementation plan. For this, creative methods could act as effortless attractors for participation, collaboration and expression.
6. Develop livability common targets to foster inter-departmental collaboration: It is not sufficient that collaborative solutions are encouraged only on the outside. Inside governing corporations as well, inter-departmental collaboration and cooperation need to be fostered. These can be achieved by way of developing common livability targets that require contribution and indicative progress from each relevant department.
7. Leverage digital technology to increase participation, gather evidence ather evidence and manage knowledge that supports just and inclusive decision-making: As governing processes gradually proceed with digital transformation at all levels, it presents an appropriate opportunity for interventions to leverage technology for citizen interactions, data collection and knowledge management, all of which can foster informed, participatory and evidence-based decision-making.
8. Using a citywide trans media education and action campaign, bring about a cultural change in perspective towards inclusive city transformation: That, public services and infrastructure improved for the marginalised and most vulnerable can improve the living standards for all, is justifiably undeniable. Yet not all stakeholders understand to empathise with the (dire) needs of the marginalised groups. Our extensive engagement in inclusive city initiatives have shed light on a blunt yet important perspective about residents from higher-income groups (HIGs). Which is that they are opposed to efforts aimed at addressing the critical needs of the ISRRs. This opposition stems from a tunnelled self-serving mindset influenced by their ignorance about ISRRs’ lifestyle in the city. For example, at multiple locations of the co-designed bus stop installation, residents from Higher-Income Groups (HIG) volunteered to present their voice opposing the bus routes sought by the ISRRs, reasoning with concerns of congestion and parking woes. Similarly in another study, HIG residents opposed street vending for the same reasons.
Our studies across such work has revealed that this neglect and ignorance is widespread across various sections of city residents and city professionals, and is rooted in an archaic belief that ‘backward is dirty’. So the solutions deployed are often towards keeping the backward out of sight, instead of investing and contributing to their growth and progress.
If one were to create a conducive environment for the development of a just and inclusive livable cities, these generationally conditioned mental models need to be addressed. The perspective shift resulting thus, would reduce barriers and enable empathetic collective action. For this, a participatory trans media education and action campaign addressing city residents and city professionals, could help bring about a cultural change in discourse towards inclusive city transformation for improving livability for all.
9. Leverage mass media and social media to consistently spotlight inclusive and equitable solutions: Indian cities largely still operate with less inclusive mindsets and non-progressive biases. This is not because inclusivity is not intended. It is merely that such an approach is uncommon or less visible, leading to misconceptions about norms and rights. So it is important to increase visibility of the needs of ISRRs, success stories of community-led initiatives and the on-ground efforts addressing them. This would empower urban citizens at large, and could motivate decision-makers to further such actions.
10. Start with solving for efficient public transportation or water bodies restoration: Gustov Petro, the current president of Columbia, and the former Mayor of Bogota (in 2020 maybe) famously said, “A developed country isn’t a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport”.
As many of our work have highlighted, efficient, inclusive and equitable public transportation is the vessel that could even carry a homeless person to their place of livelihood. By being affordable and accessible carrying vessels, public transportation could help ensure that the most vulnerable are able to meet their income needs. It would also ensure physical and mental well-being by providing opportunities for exposure and leisure.
Furthermore, public transportation, a service all, if run effectively and efficiently, would positively impact many other livability indices in the city.
Similarly, ‘thirst’ was a core driver that literally brought together multiple villagers towards collective water stewardship. Parallely in urban centres, the stress of thirst induced by the ongoing experiences of frequent urban flooding and water scarcity in summer, has the potential to, with least effort, align citizens and city stakeholders for collective action.
Initiating enhancements in urban livability through these two low hanging fruits could bring about the necessary inertia and momentum towards addressing challenges with other livability indices.
In some sense, the livability of a place is a basic human right. India's cities cannot achieve high standards of livability by leaving the marginalized behind. City residents, civic stakeholders and decision makers must actively collaborate, embrace inclusive and participatory governance models, and prioritize the voices and needs of ISRRs in city development towards improved livability. Holistic policy reforms that centre on inclusion, sustainability and dignity for all could further build momentum in this direction. Indian cities have the tools and resources. One just has to effectively tap into them.
References:
[1] New Climate Economy, 2014
[2] Jain et al, Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights-Understanding the Needs of India’s Informal Housing Dwellers, 2016
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