Cities are increasingly coming under pressure to provide infrastructure services to an increasing urban population in developing countries like India. However, public infrastructure service delivery and its improvement need sufficient financial resources at the hands of local bodies – both municipal and development authorities. It is well acknowledged that the urban local bodies (ULBs) in developing countries need to improve fiscal performance through better devolution – both administrative as well as fiscal (Peterson and Annez, 2008; RBI DRG, 2008). One option that received attention in this context is the utilization of land assets towards improving finances of municipal/ urban bodies (Mohanty, 2003; Vaidya, 2008). Land is a valuable asset of ULBs and increasing urbanization is driving up its price. As the investments made by ULBs towards public infrastructure and amenities are capitalized in land value (both public and private), the ULBs can capture the potential of land value gains by monetizing urban land for revenue generation purpose which aids in better infrastructure service provision. In this paper, an attempt is made to highlight the importance of land- based financing of cities with a review of the experiences; then a governance frame work for the disposal of urban land is developed such that infrastructure finance and urban development are sustainable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of the urban informal manufacturing sector in Assam in the post-reform period. The structure and growth of the sector has been examined by types of enterprises and two-digit industry groups in terms of number of enterprises, number of workers, and gross value added using data from the four NSS surveys (1994-95, 2000-01, 2005-06, and 2010-11). The urban informal manufacturing in the state is very small in size compared to its rural counterpart, but the sector has been expanding gradually over the years. Although, the Own Account Manufacturing Enterprises (OAMEs) and establishments segments have almost equal shares in number of enterprises, establishments outnumber OAMEs by huge margin in number of workers and gross value added. At the disaggregated level, the sector mainly comprised of a set of agro-based industries and was characterized by high degree of specialization. While, the sector registered a high growth in gross value added throughout the period 1994- 95 to 2010-11, the growth rates of number of enterprises and workers were not quite satisfactory; in fact, the growth rates were negative during 2005-06 to 2010-11. Wood and textiles were the highest growing sectors, whereas leather and tobacco registered the highest negative growth rates during the study period. The deceleration of urban informal manufacturing sector during 2000s is out of the scope of the present study.

There is a growing interest in social science and policy application of quality of life (QoL) in cities, as it has an innate relationship with its built environment. The extensive review of literature brings to forefront the lack of consensus with regard to the approaches and methodology involving evaluation of quality of life; the term quality itself may be subjective, open to multiple & varied interpretations. The paper brings to the forefront major research findings and their associated knowledge gaps into four important themes, namely conceptual/theoretical knowledge, methods and tools, empirical information and policy application. It concludes with substantial evidence that although, there is considerable understanding and evolving theoretical discourse on QoL at the global, national and sub-national levels, there is still no single or universally accepted definition of QoL. The study underscores that while parameters like density, green space, clean environment, convenience, visual character, etc. have been identified normatively as variables that drive or influence QoL, there is no unique methodology or tool that can demonstrate, simulate or model their individual or cumulative effect onto QoL of different residential typologies of built environments within a city. This is further, complicated by a paucity of sufficient evidences from India that empirically corroborates the conceptual and methodological relationship between built environment of a city and its different precincts with its QoL. The study also reveals that while, the discourse on QoL in cities is based on the premise that cities are heterogeneous entities that foster different living characteristics, the QoL within a city is itself considered homogeneous. This necessitates a systematic and empirical research into the role of built environment and its association with urban QoL at the level of residential neighbourhoods and thus becoming a useful instrument for policies aimed at improving the essential well-being of people in urban settlements.

According to 2011 census, 31 percent of the total population of India are living in urban areas. But, the level of urbanization is not similar all over the country. This paper, based on census data, tries to explores the spatial distribution of urban population and its linkages with development in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. As both these states are newly formed states having similar geographical as well as demographic characteristics, and the same level of urbanization, it is significant to see the level of development. The level of urbanization is analyzed by the percentage of urban population and socio-economic indicators such as literacy rate, sex ratio, non-agricultural workers and work participation rate. Results of the analysis reveals that the level of urbanization in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh is lower than the national level. Distribution of urban population among cities/towns shows that more than half of the total urban population are currently residing in class 1 rank cities in both the states. Development index illustrate that Chhattisgarh have better level of development as compared to Jharkhand. Godda district has lowest and Purbi Singhbhum district has highest level of development in Jharkhand while in Chhattisgarh, Surguja districts has lowest and Raipur district has highest level of development. Further, there is significant association between level of urbanization and development index.

Development and migration are discussed as inter-related terms today due to increasing migratory trends across all the countries of the world. While migration is led by displacement, loss of livelihood and vulnerable conditions, it is also characterized by a number of post-migration difficulties of the migrants at the host cities, of which absence or limited availability of social security measures is a major issue.
Social security needs include basic amenities of housing, access to subsidized food supplies, education, health services to name a few. Although, the government, through the constitutional guarantees has enacted a number of provisions to protect the interests of the poor migrants in terms of their social security needs, accessing them has many technical problems like state boundaries, extreme poverty of the migrant worker and impermanency of occupations/wage work available in the globalized economy.
The paper discusses the social security needs and challenges faced by the migrants taking access to rationed food supplies, education and housing as examples.

Delhi is a mega city which has undergone immense transformation. It is dominated by urban landscape, flyovers, elevated corridors and roads which are being constantly widened and improved. The provision of urban underground utilities is disturbing the soil quality, the roots of existing trees is injured in the process and therefore the tree cover do not survive beyond a few seasons after the construction activity. Urban parks and other open spaces are often intruded upon, even the peri-urban areas around Delhi are fast expanding, reducing quality green cover. Though urban green spaces (including residential parks) exist in Delhi, the urban soil has poor physical qualities, further there is loss of soil cover, alteration of existing natural drainage pathways. The objective is to assess the negative impact of anthroprogenic disturbance on soil hydrology and soil texture in urban green spaces, since these spaces play a vital role in absorbing rain water and reduce flooding. The soil infiltration studies were conducted using standard double ring infiltrometer in parts of south west Delhi and they suggest lowered infiltration rates than that is expected for fine to medium sand in the region.The infiltration rate determined varies from 6mm/hr to 36mm/hr. The soil texture was studied using standard sieve analysis. The top soil was found to be fine sand, (40% fine sand, 29% medium, 12% coarse sand and less than 10% fines and around 10% gravel). The physical inspection of the soil showed construction debris, plastics, high level of sealing on the surface of soil, these suggest altered surface interventions has reduced the infiltration capacity of fine sandy soil. This has led to altered storm runoff responses in these green spaces. Urbanization is inevitable, it is recommended that urban design guidelines should include green infrastructure planning with managed infiltration for urban open space so that urban soil properties are restored. The infiltration capacity of soil in urban green spaces have sufficient capacity to absorb the average daily rainfall volume, only very high intensity rainfall episodes should cause urban flooding. So disposal of debris, plastics, should not be allowed in parks and open spaces adjacent to roads. The research findings of this paper are applicable for other cities in India too, which are undergoing transformation. Upscaling of this study will help restoration of natural drainage pathways for rain water, including efficient ground water recharge in urban areas, as infiltration plays a vital role in it.

It is often argued that in developing countries urban growth is fuelled by the rural-urban migrants who constitute bulk of the slum population in the cities and towns. However, in India since the last three decades, urban growth rate has been slowing down owing to the stagnating rate of rural-urban migration and declining natural increase of population. Cities which are in ‘sanitising mode’ do not welcome the poor migrant that has been opined as the fallout of ‘exclusionary urbanization’. Given this backdrop, the present study examines the nature of slum growth corresponding to urban growth in India using census data of 2001 and 2011. The study reveals that slum growth has also declined. It is further confirmed that one-third of the total towns/cities which are mostly large in size have registered negative growth of slum population. Also more than half of the towns/cities in this study experienced declining share of slum population suggesting overall declining trend of slum growth in India. Unfortunately, this declining trend of slum growth is not attributed to the substantial improvement in the standard of living in the slums. Rather, declining influx of poor migrants in the cities and large scale involuntary shifting of slum population from city core to periphery have resulted in this growth pattern.