AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Volume 6 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.18063/ijps.v6i1.1051
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Inequalities in urban exposure to infrastructure, services, and environment in million-plus cities of India

Surendra Kumar Patel1* Manas R. Pradhan1
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1 Department of Fertility Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
IJPS 2020, 6(1), 16–29; https://doi.org/10.18063/ijps.v6i1.1051
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Environment and Population Dynamics in South Asia)
© Invalid date by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Unplanned spatial development, unregulated migration, and changing energy consumption patterns are likely to increase the vulnerability to climate change of populations inhabiting in urban areas. This study aims to estimate urban exposure level and examine the inequalities in the availability of infrastructure and the provision of services in million-plus cities in India. Using data from Census 2011 for 40 million-plus cities, this study measured urban exposure through the urbanicity scale ranging from 0 to 70 points. The urbanicity scores revealed a transparent gradient in the level of urban exposure across these 40 million-plus cities, with the scores ranging from 45.59 (the lowest, in Meerut) to 61.47 (the highest, in Delhi). The economic activity scores were similar for all the million-plus cities, whereas the health infrastructure scores showed a wide variation from 1.0 to 8.8 points. Population, health, educational infrastructure, and built environment contributed the most to the inequality. Unless addressed urgently, these inequalities in infrastructure and services will affect the sustainability of these million-plus cities and may hinder the country’s achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate change.

Keywords
Urban exposure
Environment
Urbanicity score
Million-plus city
India
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing