Context:
The article highlights how climate change is exposing the inadequacies of traditional urban governance metrics, such as livability indices and prosperity indices. Urban floods, cyclones, heatwaves, landslides, and rainfall anomalies are increasingly breaching outdated urban assessment paradigms.
Key Highlights
Limitations of Existing Urban Indices
- Indices such as the UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index and Global Liveability Index measure efficiency, infrastructure, productivity, quality of life, and environmental sustainability.
- These indices fail to capture climate vulnerability, extreme weather events, and cities’ ability to recover from shocks.
- Metrics often overlook informal settlements, governance failures, and uneven distribution of services.
Asia’s Climate Vulnerability
- Cyclone Biparjoy, extreme monsoons in Sri Lanka, floods in Thailand, the Philippines, and India demonstrate the increasing frequency and scale of climate disasters.
- Rapid urbanisation along rivers, coasts, and slopes creates hazard-prone urban expansions.
- Regions such as Southern Thailand, Hai Yai city, and Manila received unprecedented rainfall and flood warnings.
Shortcomings in Livability Indices
- Climate risks are not integrated adequately.
- Indices focus on averages, ignoring inequalities—poorer communities face worse outcomes.
- Metrics emphasise access to utilities, not resilience during disasters.
- Rich neighbourhoods may score high but remain vulnerable to floods, heatwaves, and infrastructural collapse.
Need for New Urban Assessment Models
- Cities require climate-resilient metrics measuring risk, capacity to adapt, and recovery mechanisms.
- Urban planning must account for ecological buffers, wetlands, drainage networks, and sustainable land use.
- Public officials need tools that reveal who suffers the most and which regions face the greatest hazard risks.
Relevant Prelims Points
- Urban Heat Island (UHI): Higher temperatures in built-up areas due to concrete surfaces, reduced vegetation.
- Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR): Includes preparedness, mitigation, and resilience-building.
- UN-Habitat Roles: Urban planning, housing, resilience frameworks.
- Climate-induced Urban Risks:
- Flash floods, heat stress, landslides, cyclones, urban drainage failures.
- Increased frequency linked to global warming + unplanned urbanisation.
- Key Terminologies:
- Climate resilience, adaptive capacity, urban vulnerability, risk mapping, equitable urban planning.
Relevant Mains Points
Why Current Urban Metrics Fail
- Built around static conditions, not dynamic climate uncertainties.
- Overfocus on economic parameters, infrastructure, and utility access.
- Ignore informal settlements where majority urban poor reside.
- Neglect mapping of micro-level vulnerabilities and natural drainage systems.
Climate Change & Urban Governance
- IPCC warns Asian cities are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate-induced flooding.
- Need integration of hydrological modelling, ecological planning, and resilience mapping.
- Emphasises the principle of leave no one behind in climate governance.
Socio-economic Inequalities Exposed
- Disasters disproportionately affect low-income groups living on marginal lands.
- Wealthier zones recover faster, widening inequality post-disaster.
- Assessment frameworks must capture who benefits and who suffers, not just “average” results.
Way Forward
- Develop Climate-Integrated Urban Livability Indices including:
- Hazard exposure mapping
- Drainage and land-use sustainability
- Housing vulnerability scoring
- Emergency response capacity
- Strengthen urban local bodies (ULBs)—funds, data systems, planning autonomy.
- Protect wetlands, floodplains, mangroves, and natural drainage networks.
- Mandatory climate impact assessment before urban expansion.
- Invest in climate-resilient infrastructure and green urban design.