Cities and Sustainability ― Issues and Strategic Pathways

The book addresses the sustainability of cities in the context of sustainability science and its application to the city boundary. In doing so it investigates all the components of a city on the basis of sustainability criteria. To achieve sustainability it is essential to adopt an integrated strategy that reflects all sectors within the city boundary and also address the four key normative concepts: the right to develop for all sections, social inclusion, convergence in living standards and shared responsibility and opportunities among sectors and sections. In this book, the individual chapters examine the nodes of sustainability of a city and thus essentially present a large canvas wherein all sustainability-relevant issues are interwoven. This integrative approach is at the heart of the book and offers an extensive, innovative framework for future research on cities and sustainability alike. The book also includes selected case studies that add to the reading and comprehension value of the concepts presented, ensuring a blend of theory and practical case studies to help readers better comprehend the principle of sustainability and its application.

S. Mahendra Dev is the Director and Vice Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, India. He was Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Government of India, Delhi. He was Director, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad for 9 years during 1999 to 2008. He received his Ph.D. from the Delhi School of Economics and did his Post-doctoral research at the Economic Growth Centre, Yale University. He was faculty member at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai for 11 years, Senior Fellow at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation during 1996-97 and Visiting Professor at the University of Bonn, Germany in 1999. He has written extensively on agricultural development, poverty and public policy, food security, employment guarantee schemes, social security, farm and non-farm employment. Prof. Dev has more than 100 research publications in national and international journals. He is the Chairman of the Committee on Terms of Trade on agriculture constituted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.

Sudhakar Yedla is a Professor of Environmental Policy at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, India. He obtained his PhD in environmental engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India and carried out Post-doctoral work at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. He has a Diploma in International Environmental Law from the UN Institute of Training and Research in Switzerland and Certification in Environmental Economics and Development Policy from the World Bank Institute, Washington D. C., USA. His areas of expertise include urban environmental policy, climate change mitigation, sustainable mobility, solid waste management and sustainable cities. Earlier he had served as a faculty member at the University of Ulsan, South Korea, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal (India). He was a Fellow at National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan and Korean Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), South Korea. He had also served the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan, UNDP as GEF and SDG consultant, UNESCAP as Sustainable City consultant, UNEP, UN-FAO and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) as a Project Director for their regional initiative on climate change. He has published over 100 articles in international journals and books and is serving in editorial boards of a number of international journals.