New Delhi: India may have become the world’s fourth-largest economy by GDP, but its continuing economic growth has not translated into a better quality of life for its urban residents, a new report by non-profits Janaagraha and Jana Urban Space Foundation has found. The report, titled ‘Shaping Urban India: By Design, Not by Default’, said that India’s metropolitan cities fare poorly compared to their global peers and have consistently ranked in the lower tier of the Global Liveability Index between 2020 and 2024.“Housing is increasingly unaffordable. Daily commutes are longer and more stressful, on roads that are congested, poorly maintained, and often unsafe. Green spaces are disappearing, flooding is more frequent and severe, and air quality is declining. These are not minor inconveniences – they result in poor health and well-being, rising healthcare costs, lost productivity, and climate vulnerability,” the report noted, adding that these factors undermine a city’s appeal as a place to live and work.Approximately Rs 8.36 lakh crore has been invested in cities since 2015, the report said, based on data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), and the 14th and 15th Finance Commission (FC) grants.Yet, poor quality of life persists due to “fragmented governance, uniform models of planning applied across different typologies of cities, limited availability and quality of city-level data, and unempowered local governments”.India today has anywhere between 522 million and 1.23 billion people living in cities and towns, the report stated, citing UN projections and World Bank estimates for urban population. By 2050, at least 723 million Indians are estimated to be living in cities.Even as the country is urbanising at an unprecedented speed and scale, liveability in cities is deteriorating because they are evolving “by default” rather than “by design”. Unplanned urban sprawlUnplanned sprawl has expanded the country’s urban footprint by 2.5 million hectares between 2005-06 and 2022-23, the equivalent of adding “a 100 Hyderabads”, as per the report. In the next 25 years, India’s cities are projected to house approximately the population of all ASEAN countries, combined.The report says that urbanisation is no longer limited to a few metropolises but also visible “in urbanised settlements that are still classified as rural, with new growth increasingly seen beyond existing urban boundaries”. What this means is that an unplanned sprawl makes providing infrastructure more expensive and difficult. It also shrinks the space for affordable housing. In seven major cities, affordable housing fell from 40% of the total housing construction in 2019 to just 16% in 2024, while high-end, luxury, and ultra-luxury housing surged to 56% from 27% in the same period, as per NITI Aayog and MoHUA data.As a result, core urban areas could have “75% higher water bills”, while peripheral areas, which often tend to lack some of these basic services, have “50% less access to piped water”. Residents in peripheral areas, the report said, also have 40% less access to critical infrastructure compared to those living closer to the city centre.For instance, Bengaluru’s IT hub, Whitefield, saw rapid spatial expansion in the 1990s and a surge in private residential construction over the years. However, for over two decades, it lacked basic services such as piped water, garbage collection, and proper footpaths and roads, with even the metro arriving only in 2023.Similarly, Gurugram, on Delhi’s periphery, expanded rapidly as an ambitious public-private project from the 1980s. But urbanisation outpaced the Haryana Urban Development Authority’s ability to provide basic amenities like roads, sewerage, water and electricity, leaving private developers to create “islands of comfort and convenience for those who could afford it”.Economic cost of poor liveabilityIndia’s cities generate over 60% of the country’s GDP, as per a 2022 NITI Aayog and Asian Development Bank report, cited by Janaagraha. As a result, they attract a huge workforce, including the migrant population, who move to cities seeking better access to jobs, better quality of jobs, with higher pay, written job contracts and added benefits.The report also argues that India has more working-age individuals than dependents, with cities expected to attract much of this workforce. By 2030, an estimated 70% of new jobs are projected to be created in urban areas. However, while urbanisation should drive a virtuous cycle of higher productivity, rising incomes, and improved quality of life in cities, current estimates suggest that even when an Indian city doubles in size (i.e.,100% increase in urbanisation), its economic productivity only increases by 12% (on average).Compared to other G20 countries, the report states, India is “far more urbanised but less productive than it should be”. And neither the GDP nor the urbanisation rate is translating into better quality of life for India’s city residents. Mumbai, for instance, has one of the world’s highest population densities, with over half the population living in informal housing without basic amenities. This, despite the fact that the city has shown a lower expansion of built-up area – the land in an urban area covered by buildings and public infrastructure. The situation in Mumbai is worse than that of cities like Bengaluru and Pune that draw the most citizen complaints about traffic congestion, but have managed to double their built-up area over two decades. This goes to show just how congested Mumbai is and signals deeper systemic challenges in how India’s cities are planned and governed.Poorly planned, designed and governed cities deliver stunted growth, the financial toll of which falls on the residents. “A 10% increase in badly managed urban density costs between USD 26-35 per person annually due to greater congestion, poorer health outcomes, and lower well-being,” the report noted.Mobility a challenge in Indian citiesAccording to the report, despite over a third of Indians walking or cycling to work, roads and mobility systems in Indian cities – particularly in metropolitan and large cities like Kolkata, Bengaluru and Pune – are designed predominantly for motor vehicles. These are among the most congested in the world, and the rising trend of low public transport capacity and high private vehicle use is part of the reason behind it.Only 3% of the municipal budget in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru is allocated to pedestrian infrastructure, even though mobility projects account for an average of 11.8% of budgets, according to an internal analysis by the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, based on the Union budgets.Poor road infrastructure can cause compromised public safety “due to open drains and poorly maintained roads, flooding from inadequate stormwater systems, poor access to public transport, lower workforce participation rates and wastage in public expenditure due to frequent road cutting”. This particularly raises the barrier for women looking for work, the report noted.Environmental cost of citiesIndian cities are growing by replacing green cover and water bodies en masse, the report pointed out.This is seen in Bengaluru, which grew by 966% between 1973 and 2023, while its vegetation and water bodies shrank in area by 88% and 79%, respectively. Vijayawada’s built-up area, similarly, grew 58% between 2001 and 2023, with its vegetation and water bodies reducing by 42% and 38%, respectively.Concretisation of cities is also contributing to intense warming and flooding. Estimates suggest that two-thirds of India’s urban population will be at risk of flooding by 2030, with potential losses of up to $5 billion.Further, air pollution, partly driven by congestion, has exceeded safe limits in most cities – big and small. Thirty-five of the world’s 50 most polluted cities are in India.In Delhi, long-term exposure to PM2.5 is estimated to reduce life expectancy by 8.2 years, while Kolkata lost 20-40% of its green space over two decades making the city far more vulnerable to climate threats, the report notes.These factors reduce the room for community interaction, recreation and leisure, while directly threatening people’s health, well-being and economic productivity, the report said.Air pollution alone costs Indian businesses approximately $95 billion per year – roughly 3% of India’s total GDP – due to absenteeism, disrupted travel and decreased output.Need of the hour: City-system reformsIndia’s “city-systems” – planning and design, decentralised participatory governance, and state capacities – determine their growth and liveability.The report said that the vision of empowering urban local governments already exists in the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992. However, 30 years since, states have only implemented around 42% of the Act’s provisions.Only seven states mandate spatial planning at regional, municipal and ward levels, the report found, and, as of March 2023, only 16 municipalities and 11 municipal corporations have functional powers over urban planning and town planning.Even as Indian cities offer better access to nutrition, child health, education, water, electricity and household assets, they face a major crisis in terms of health and well-being, the human and economic cost of which are staggering.Arguing that better city-systems are “the surest way” for India to fulfil its growth and liveability potential, the report suggested five big shifts: to invest significantly in walkability and public transport, implementing city action plans in medium and small cities, adopting differentiated planning and governance models instead of a “one-size-fits-all model”, and building and using city-level data systems for governance.“What is required now is political commitment, institutional reform, and sustained citizen engagement to make it real,” the report said. After all, a city that is unliveable is ultimately unsustainable.