Environment and Urbanization ASIA

Kundu, Debolina

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317753763

Mahadevia, Darshini; Bhatia, Neha; Bhatt, Bijal

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748449

The trend of involving private sector in affordable housing segment is observed globally. In India, it has been mainstreamed through the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) under which one component deals with in-situ slum redevelopment through the public–private partnership (PPP) mode in which the private sector brings in finance and skills to construct housing while the public sector provides land. Taking case study of one slum site, wherein the slum rehabilitation scheme has been implemented in Ahmedabad, this article narrates the bottlenecks faced in its implementation in spite of the agency of an NGO involved as a mediator in the process.

Dubey, Amaresh; Tiwari, Shivakar

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748451

Urban poverty in most of the developing world is considered a spillover of rural poverty. With increasing pace of development in these countries, urban settlements are assimilating migrants searching for better livelihood opportunities and who could be vulnerable and poor in the urban settlements. This article empirically assesses the levels of urban poverty in India at the disaggregated level and examines how recent growth episode has impacted poverty reduction. This article finds that growth in general has been reducing poverty, but its effect in reducing poverty over different geographical domain has not been uniform. We find that rising inequality is playing a significant role in differential reduction of urban poverty in India and in its states.

Munshi, Talat; Brussel, Mark; Zuidgeest, Mark; Van Maarseveen, Martin

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748521

This article describes how employment sub-centres can be identified applying geo-spatial modelling techniques in the context of metropolitan areas in India, and how the development of these employment centres can be linked to the levels of accessibility to labour, access to transport infrastructure as well as land use mix and land use diversity. For the city of Ahmedabad, employment sub-centres are identified for the year 2010, while the progression of employment in retail, commercial and industrial sectors in each of these centres is studied for the period from 1980 to 2010. Definite the signs of sprawl-type development and polarization reversal are observed, including the emergence of new employment sub-centres across the urban area, and the rapid growth of centres further away from the central business district. Retail and commercial sectors have grown exponentially, whereas industrial and manufacturing sector’s growth is stagnant. This development is mixed and heterogeneous, with the growth of the retail and the commercial sectors found to have a significant and positive relation with access to labour and transport infrastructure. These identified patterns of development provide important information to urban planners enabling them to make informed decision, for example, in locating future employment activities, identifying future transit-oriented development nodes, etc.

Haque, Ismail; Das, Dipendra Nath; Patel, Priyank Pravin

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317749657

As India transforms into an increasingly urban society, ward-level data from the 2011 Indian Census is analysed to decipher how inequality patterns vary across different scales of urban settlements, highlighting the spatial segregation by gender, caste, socio-economic status (SES) and access to goods, by examining a specific state (Uttar Pradesh) as a microcosm to account for the nation’s enormous socio-political diversity. Caste-based spatial segregation is greater in small and medium cities compared to metropolises, possibly from greater intermingling of socio-cultural identities in larger urban locales that lower caste barriers. This also applies to segregation by SES. Contrastingly, segregation by gender or by access to essential goods is higher in larger and medium cities. Within cities, caste-based segregation is greater than that by SES. A stark spatial segregation in terms of households’ (HHs) access to essential public and private goods exists, often higher than even caste-based segregation. Summary explanations for these differentials in spatial segregation across settlements scales are offered, highlighting probable further research aspects.

Quintal, Anna Laura; Gotangco, Charlotte Kendra; Guzman, Maria Aileen Leah

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748531

Managing urban growth is essential to the conservation of the Seven Lakes ecosystem in San Pablo City, Laguna province in the Philippines. This study simulates potential conversion of agricultural lands to built-up areas using the land transformation model (LTM), which integrates geographical information systems (GIS) and an artificial neural network (ANN). Historical drivers of the expansion of built-up areas are identified and validated through the application of LTM to land cover maps from 1988 to 2015. Identified drivers include distance to roads, distance to trails, distance to the Seven Lakes, distance to existing built-up areas, slopes and population density per barangay. Results from the percent correct matrix (PCM) were 79.88 per cent for the 1988–2003 runs and 66.42 per cent for the 2003–2015 runs, while the Kappa statistic for both time periods was higher than 0.60, which indicates high levels of agreement. Forecasted scenarios were business-as-usual (BAU) growth, doubled growth and strict law implementation protecting the vicinity around the Seven Lakes and other natural areas. In the BAU scenario, urban expansion spread out along the road networks. The doubled growth scenario showed that further expansion will likely extend around the proximity of the lakes, which may adversely affect the livelihoods of the local fishing communities. As such, it was recommended that preventive measures, such as strict implementation of buffer zones coupled with regular monitoring, be taken to manage land use in the surrounding lake areas.

Thanvisitthpon, Nawhath; Shrestha, Sangam; Pal, Indrajit

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748532

Flooding in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, impedes the development of the city and brings challenges to the well-being of its citizens. The city is situated in a flood-prone area. This study investigated perceptions of the causes among the residents of perennial floods in Bangkok, examining daily precipitation changes over the last 30 years on eight indices (R10, R20, R25, CDD, CWD, RX5day, PRCPTOT and R99p) and the characteristics of the city that promote or exacerbate flooding. The data was collected by the Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) from station ID 455201 in the period 1986 -2015. Plausible factors contributing to flooding vulnerability and to the ineffective implementation of the city’s flood corrective and preventive measures were determined. A survey of 400 residents of 20 flood-prone localities in the capital’s four districts was carried out and statistical analysis was performed. Further, levels of satisfaction with the efficiency and effectiveness of the city’s flood corrective and preventive measures were assessed. The documentary and empirical findings collectively illuminate three contributing factors or causes of persistent flooding in the capital and of the ineffectual execution of flood-related policies and measures.

Mannan, Fouzia

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748534

Deep-rooted gender inequalities exist in organizations responsible for provisioning sanitation facilities in Bangladesh with regard to organizational culture, financial status and power axis within and beyond the organizations. There are huge gaps between these organizations as these have differential gender-sensitive policies or even lack proper understanding of gender. Without having a gender-sensitive leadership within organizations, sanitation issues continue to have a male-dominated bias. Given the patriarchal organizational culture and mindset in Bangladesh, serious rethinking is needed to bring about a gender-sensitive sanitation policy. This article aims to investigate gender issues in sanitation through qualitative analysis of select sanitation and water-implementing organizations in Dhaka and explore how they understand, interpret and practice ‘gender’.

Parkar, Khaliq

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748536

Shaw, Annapurna

2018 Environment and Urbanization ASIA

doi: 10.1177/0975425317748537