@article{160246,
  keywords = {India, NSF Sustainable Healthy Cities Network, NSF Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE)},
  author = {Ajay Nagpure and M. Reiner and A. Ramaswami},
  title = {Resource requirements of inclusive urban development in India: insights from ten cities},
  abstract = {<p>This paper develops a methodology to assess the resource requirements of inclusive urban development in India and compares those requirements to current community-wide material and energy flows. Methods include: (a) identifying minimum service level benchmarks for the provision of infrastructure services including housing, electricity and clean cooking fuels; (b) assessing the percentage of homes that lack access to infrastructure or that consume infrastructure services below the identified benchmarks; (c) quantifying the material requirements to provide basic infrastructure services using India-specific design data; and (d) computing material and energy requirements for inclusive development and comparing it with current community-wide material and energy flows. Applying the method to ten Indian cities, we find that: 1\%{\textendash}6\% of households do not have electricity, 14\%{\textendash}71\% use electricity below the benchmark of 25 kWh capita-month-1; 4\%{\textendash}16\% lack structurally sound housing; 50\%{\textendash}75\% live in floor area less than the benchmark of 8.75 m2 floor area/capita; 10\%{\textendash}65\% lack clean cooking fuel; and 6\%{\textendash}60\% lack connection to a sewerage system. Across the ten cities examined, to provide basic electricity (25 kWh capita-month-1) to all will require an addition of only 1\%{\textendash}10\% in current community-wide electricity use. To provide basic clean LPG fuel (1.2 kg capita-month-1) to all requires an increase of 5\%{\textendash}40\% in current community-wide LPG use. Providing permanent shelter (implemented over a ten year period) to populations living in non-permanent housing in Delhi and Chandigarh would require a 6\%{\textendash}14\% increase over current annual community-wide cement use. Conversely, to provide permanent housing to all people living in structurally unsound housing and those living in overcrowded housing (\&lt;5 m cap-2) would require 32\%{\textendash}115\% of current community-wide cement flows. Except for the last scenario, these results suggest that social policies that seek to provide basic infrastructure provisioning for all residents would not dramatically increasing current community-wide resource flows.</p>
},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
  url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa4fc},
  language = {eng},
}