Editorial

The twenty-first century can be described as an urban century, wherein urbanization is playing a vital role in determining the future of the earth. The year 2007 witnessed more than 50% of the global population living in urban areas and the figure is estimated to reach 70% by 2050 (WUP, 2018). Most importantly, the pace of urbanization is projected to be rapid in developing countries of Asia and Africa. The increasing pace of urbanization will pose both opportunities as well as challenges and will affect cities, towns and rural areas in diverse ways. This underlines the importance of planning and curating efficient and coherent policy responses that are location-specific and cut across different urban domains. This volume is a collection of 11 articles, which while highlighting some of the key challenges of urbanization, offer sustainable solutions for cities.

The first article ‘Exploring the Gaps and Potential for Strengthening Urban-Rural Linkages in Hoi An City, Vietnam’ authored by Cuong Le Dinha et al. evaluated the gaps between urban–rural linkages within the corridor of Hoi An City. They suggested potential solutions utilizing the Circulating and Ecological Sphere (CES) principles for strengthening these linkages and gradually promoting sustainable development of the city and surrounding areas. The study recommended optimization of synergies and reduction of trade-offs between the proposed approach and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Kala Seetharam Sridhar in her article ‘Is Your City Too Big? Causes of Urban Primacy in India’ examined the degree of urban primacy in Indian states. Using Zipf’s law, and the Pareto exponent for all Indian states for the years 2001 and 2011, the author found that Kerala state has the least primacy as of 2011, where its biggest city contained only 5% of its urban population. The article highlighted that state per capita income, population and length of railways have a significant negative effect on primacy.

The relationship between local economic development and urbanization is an important policy concern in developing countries. The article ‘Local Economy as the Key Driver of Urbanisation in the Indian Sundarbans’ authored by Rakes Sarkar and Gopa Samanta explores the role of the local economy in the process of urbanization of the Indian Sundarbans part of the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta. The article based on primary data collected from 240 households and 100 shops argued that the local economy plays a key role in the urbanization process of the Indian Sundarbans, as the regional economy is gradually shifting from the farm to non-farm activities.

In their article ‘Understanding Flood Vulnerability Using Index-based Approach’, Jahidul Islam and Kamrul Hasan presented an index that can be used to determine the vulnerability of a location to flooding. Taking the Chilmari sub-district of Bangladesh as a case study, the authors developed a Flood Vulnerability Index (FVI) with a set of 23 indicators to assess physical, economic, social and environmental components of floods. The index while determining the vulnerability, will also help to understand the flood exposure, sensitivity and resilience of a location. The FVI will be a useful tool for identifying and prioritizing locations that are at risk, as well as taking action to reduce present flood vulnerabilities and prepare for future flood risk reduction strategies.

In the article ‘Assessment, Impact Analysis, and Coping Strategies to Combat Drought in Naogaon District of Bangladesh’, Nowshin Rahman Rushmi et al. used primary data to highlight that in order to combat drought, people are using traditional measures, such as crop calendars, adoption of less water-intensive crops, water harvesting, alternative cropping, etc. They also brought to the fore that adapters significantly outperform the non-adapters in terms of output value, suggesting that specific options not only help farmers deal with the issue of climate change but also pay off through increased output. Using secondary data and remote sensing, the authors predicted the drought scenario based on groundwater potential zone modelling. They suggested that institutionalization of adaptive measures can play a significant role in drought regions to reduce the negative consequences of drought.

Jyoti Dash and P. S. N. Rao drew attention to the land pooling/reconstitution (LP/R) model and its potential challenges in their paper titled ‘Pre-requisites and Factors for Effective and Efficient Implementation of Land Pooling/Reconstitution’. With the growing importance of the LP/R model as an alternative to compulsory land acquisition, the authors study its implementation and success in nine Asian countries; namely, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, Turkey, Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand and Indonesia. Their country-level analysis of LP/R models and their financing mechanism reveals several key prerequisites and enabling factors behind their effective implementation, including regulatory reforms, institutional capability, cost recovery mechanism and stakeholder participation.

India and Germany are committed to the 2030 Agenda and have aligned their key developmental programmes towards attaining SDGs. The article ‘Measuring Sustainable Urban Development: A Case of India, Europe, and Germany’ (authored by Kundu et al.) tries to understand the urban data ecosystem to monitor the progress or regress of SDGs in India, Europe and Germany. The article highlights the fact that while both countries have made good progress in promoting data-driven governance through strengthening the official statistical ecosystem at various levels, there are numerous gaps in the existing data ecosystem, which weakens the monitoring as well as the implementation of the SDGs at the local level. In this regard, there is an urgent need to institutionalize the collection and collation of data and to ensure their timelines to be recurring to be useful for policy formulation and planning.

There are four articles in the ‘Perspectives’ section. In the article titled ‘Urban Households’ Investment Behaviour toward Home Appliances in India’, Monalisa Singh and Chandra Sekhar Bahinipati examined the decisions to purchase home appliances in the context of gender roles and neighbourhood effect. With electricity demand from home appliances expected to grow steadily, households’ motivation behind its procurement has broader implications on energy policies and the attainment of net zero. Their analysis of 22,146 households from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS-1 and IHDS-2) found that women’s bargaining power in the household played a significant role in purchasing home appliances. The authors also emphasized that households follow their neighbours’ preference patterns. They recommended that energy policies in India need to incorporate a gender mainstreaming approach to reduce carbon intensity in the environment and lower the country’s energy demand.

In the article titled ‘Will a Plant-Based Approach Be Sufficient to Address Food Security, Nutritional Adequacy, and Sustainability in the Future’, Sobha Suri and Subhasree Roy explored the effectiveness of plant-based diets with regard to their health and environmental benefits. They argued that the production of plant-based food is more energy efficient and produces less greenhouse gas as compared to animal-based food. The paper used various secondary data to examine the acceptability and affordability of a plant-based diet as well as its environmental sustainability and nutritional value. In light of this, the authors advocate for the viability of a plant-based diet for a sustainable food system.

Soumya Bhowmick and Dishari Chatterjee, in their paper titled ‘Reimagining Urban Infrastructure for G20: India’s Mission LiFE for Sustainable Cities’ explored the pathways for India to create resilient cities that align with the SDG Agenda 2030 and the Mission Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE). They investigated how behavioural changes, consumption patterns and production practices inspired by LiFE Mission can contribute to the transition towards sustainable cities.

Dhiraj Barman in his paper titled ‘Land Redevelopment, Real Estate and Capital in Urban Place-Making’, argued that though geographies of real estate, land redevelopment and capital play crucial roles in India’s contemporary urban place-making, however, it is important to understand the local social structure and evolving spatial processes. Taking the case of Siliguri, a medium-sized city in West Bengal, India, the author explained that, unlike any megacity, transnational capital networks have played a limited direct role here in developing the city’s real estate. The city’s urban transition has been primarily driven by the local business and propertied class, who saw a business opportunity in growing the real estate market and consumption sector.

We hope the papers in this volume will be helpful in developing policies towards a sustainable urban future and be of interest to researchers, academicians, practitioners and policymakers concerned with urban issues. We continue to solicit articles discussing the contemporary environmental and urbanization issues with a focus on Asia. Original research with a focus on comparative analysis of different countries on specific issues highlighting urban challenges or solutions is welcome.