CM wants index to gauge city’s living conditions

How liveable is your city and how does it fare in comparison to other global mega cities, like Sao Paulo or Mexico City?

How liveable is your city and how does it fare in comparison to other global mega cities, like Sao Paulo or Mexico City?

HT Image

Soon, Mumbaiites may have a measure of the state of their city’s governance and infrastructure.

Metropolis, a world association of 120 global cities, may undertake a project for the city to benchmark its basic amenities and facilities and create a liveability index.

A delegation of Metropolis, led by Agnes Bickart, secretariat general, met chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Saturday. “The CM was keen on developing a liveability index for Mumbai, benchmarking its various aspects in conjunction with other mega cities. He was also keen on dialogue on urban planning across cross-sections of society,” said Sunil Dubey, a member of the Metropolis delegation.

An index like this would, typically, track the city’s open spaces, cost of food, population density, capacity of local trains, housing and the like. Mumbai and its vast hinterland is estimated to become one of the largest metropolitan region in the world by 2031, second to perhaps only Tokyo.

The delegation presented Chavan it’s soon to be launched publication: Indian Cities — Managing Urban Growth, which has three case studies from the state.“We should initiate citizen interactions and dialogue on issues like urban infrastructure, basic amenities and housing. We can study how cities like Brazil, Mexico have met challenges of urban planning,” Chavan said.