Poor planning has led to a never ending cycle of floods in India.

The one time the police are as helpless as everyone else in Gurgaon

Indian cities come to a standstill every monsoon. Man-made factors created by rapid urbanization coupled with a lack of city and environmental planning reduce the disaster resilience of these Indian cities. Climate change brings on more intense Monsoons and India is contributing to the problem. India is a top emitter of greenhouse gasses emissions that generate erratic rainfall patterns in the monsoon, thereby creating a cyclical problem. Planners need to provide nature-based solutions and enforce environmental standards to fix it.

Historically, Indian cities never had drainage problems due to the abundance of natural drains and water bodies in various parts of the city. However, due to the rapid urbanization and expansion, these drainage systems have become increasingly compromised. Today, India has 39 cities that have more than 1 million inhabitants and 388 cities that have more than 100,000 inhabitants according to the World Population Review. In the last 10 years, the urban population in India has grown from 391 million to 493 million people.

The occurrence of urban floods has also shown a similar trajectory, with an increase in urban flooding incidents in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Hyderabad- all with populations more than 5 million people. It notably began in 2005 with the Mumbai floods where thousands died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless; this has recurred annually across the country and left cities in shambles according to the National Disaster Management Authority. These floods also cause devastation in lost property, business standstills, forest uprooting, blackouts, and water, housing and food insecurities. Given that India’s urban population will nearly double by 2050 to 877 million, the urban flooding problem has immense implications for the future.

Most of the problem is man-made and planners have not kept up. The major cause and origin of these urban floods has been the rapid urbanization in India and city infrastructure not being able to keep up with its pace. As the urban population kept increasing, so did cities’ boundaries. Urban forests and perennial water bodies were swallowed up over time by private developers who continually expanded the built up environment beyond the confines of the original city. The problem is particularly visible in Bangalore, where the built up area now covers 86% of the region compared to around 40% 20 years ago.

All that concrete limits green spaces and natural drainage channels, reducing the water-holding capacity of cities. Urban expansion was aggravated by large-scale illegal settlements that encroached upon water bodies and forests as local governments failed to enact and enforce regulations to protect these areas. The affordable urban housing shortage also aggravated these issues as the migrants were left with no other options. In Bangalore itself, it has affected nearly 200 natural lakes and a canal network that connected these water systems, limiting the drainage system’s capacity to absorb and siphon off water. The existing environmental infrastructure lacks protection due to a lack of formal planning standards which leads to a lack of enforcement by local authorities. The private developers take over low-lying areas that form the natural drainage systems in the city and this exacerbates the urban flooding problem tenfold.

As cities expand beyond their original limits, the sewage system does not expand at the same pace. The increased wastewater from sewage systems is discharged into the few stormwater drains and rivers that still do exist with the consequence that the sewage mixes with the stormwater during monsoons and floods the city. Drains are either undersized or non-existent because of the low priority given to them by city planning departments, with preference given to overground “visible” structures that cannot handle the load of the monsoon and are more prone to overflow onto surface roads. The lack of a proper waste disposal system in cities also results in these drains being severely choked by indiscriminate dumping of waste and construction debris, limiting their already reduced capacity further.

The consequences of urban flooding are immense, both jarringly visible loss of life and more insidious after effects of displacement and homelessness. The urban poor and migrant laborers in Indian cities bear the brunt of this risk. They move from their hometowns in the rural hinterlands in search of occupation but are only able to work as low income daily wage earners in jobs like domestic workers, cleaners, taxi drivers, etc. They usually live in informal temporary settlements in underdeveloped areas that suffer from a lack of sanitation, clean water, formal housing, road networks, electricity and sewage. During floods, these settlements are washed away. Those that survive see their losses compounded, losing out on the incomes they could have earned from their daily wage jobs as the city comes to a standstill and they are unable to go to work. But with job centers moving to cities and a lack of affordable housing for new migrants, these settlements expand beyond their original boundaries and are built and rebuilt after each flood.

Urban floods also derail the economy in the short and long term. Cars and houses get submerged during floods and the private costs of replacing these takes years to recover. Millions of dollars of taxpayer money is used to fix public infrastructure and pump the stormwater out from the flood centers. In the state of Kerala alone in 2018, where majority of the flooding took place in urban and semi-urban areas, the World Bank and Asian Development estimate that the recovery cost on housing, infrastructure, utilities, livelihoods, health, environment, and cultural heritage  is approximately US$ 3.5 billion, just for the priority sectors. Apart from this, business comes to a standstill, resulting in a loss of faith in city infrastructure. This has turned away potential investors and has cost the Indian economy greatly in the long term.

This however is not just an Indian issue- Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc also face the same urban flooding problem. South Asian cities that faced an urban population boom post independence and economic liberalization have not been able to increase their capacity at the same pace. The lack of expenditure on expansive drainage and enforcement of environmental standards will continue to leave these cities in a vicious cycle. The increased emissions from urban areas will also speed up this flood cycle as rainfall will continue to be erratic due to climate change. The way forward is one that is led by nature-based solutions and environmental planning standards that regulate and manage the city effectively. These solutions can come in the form of revitalizing stormwater drains, increasing green cover, creating detention/holding ponds, and improving catchment areas connected to roads. Urban flooding requires our attention year-round, not just in the monsoon season.

You can reach the author of this piece, Ritwick Dutta, at: rd3203@nyu.edu 

You can reach the editor of this piece, Patrick Spauster, at: ps4375@nyu.edu

Mayor Adam’s City of Yes means yes to green infrastructure, yes to more commercial space, and yes to zoning liberalization

Mayor Eric Adams has been pushing New York as a  ‘City of Yes’ since June – his vision to turn New York City into a more inclusive and equitable place to live and work. But until this month, it’s been unclear what exactly that means. 

This past month, the Department of City Planning held two public information sessions to elaborate on  ‘City of Yes’ initiatives and hear from community members. The plan is driven by comprehensive zoning text amendments to break down barriers and allow smoother development processes.During last week’s information session, city planners delved into the goals of each zoning initiative and provided real-life examples to illustrate how ‘City of Yes’ will meet the city’s climate goals, support growing businesses, and increase the city’s affordable housing stock. 

City of Carbon Neutrality

In New York City, over 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are driven by the building sector. The City of Carbon Neutrality would build upon existing initiatives like the city’s first green zoning overhaul, which loosened restrictions on energy-efficient retrofittings, and the 80×50 roadmap, the city’s concrete plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. Nilus Klingel, senior planner at the DCP, argued that zoning tweaks can eliminate obstacles that hinder climate-smart investments.

The city’s current zoning codes make it nearly impossible to achieve a carbon-neutral city. For instance, existing zoning limitations leave little opportunities for solar rooftops and building retrofits due to height limits and maximum permitted floor area ratio (FAR) rules. Additionally, existing zoning is lagging in critical climate areas, such as energy storage, electric vehicle charging locations, and stormwater management. 

In one example Klingel provided, changes like updating zoning regulations for street trees can be implemented to provide opportunities for more environmentally sustainable designs, including new streetscape prototypes for curbside rain gardens, which disproportionately don’t have trees.

(The Waterfront Alliance)

This plan hopes to fix long overdue impediments such as transitioning the grid from fossil fuels to renewable energy, accommodating a larger range of building retrofits, updating solid waste and water zoning regulations, and supporting the growth of electric transportation and micro mobility. 

City of Economic Opportunity

Many business owners across the city struggle due to confusing and inconsistent zoning restrictions and design rules in existing commercial districts. Other restrictions, like existing remnants from the 1926 Cabaret Law, hinder neighborhood and economic vibrancy for emerging nightlife. Matt Waskiewicz, from the Economic Development and Regional Planning Division at the DCP,  discussed the City of Economic Opportunity’s plan to allow the repurposing of existing and creation of new spaces to accommodate the city’s growing businesses. 

(Department of City Planning)

Zoning for the City of Economic Opportunity would liberalize commercial districts by allowing same use types in similar districts and permit more activities that are currently restrained. 

In the examples Waskiewicz provided, businesses currently don’t have the flexibility to grow due to zoning restrictions on certain activities, density restrictions for businesses that want to relocate, and square footage restrictions on businesses that want to expand. 

The plan would allow for the same mix of businesses in C1 and C2 districts, such as allowing both bicycle sales and rentals or repairs shops to operate within the same neighborhood commercial district. The plan would also allow similar mix of businesses activities in higher density areas, like C4, C5, and C6 districts. This would provide currently restricted businesses in higher density districts, such as art and dance studios, to easily relocate and operate across neighborhoods. 

Furthermore, current zoning regulations for economic development are outdated, as they don’t provide tools for growing industrial buildings. For instance, the owner of a film lighting business located in a 1-story industrial building in Queens (pictured below) cannot expand to add more floors above the storage area on the ground floor under the current zoning code. This puts them, and other owners of industrial buildings, at risk of relocating outside of the city in order to grow their businesses.

One story industrial building in Sunnyside, Queens (Department of City Planning)

The plan would accommodate for the city’s growing business sector by updating commercial districts to mirror the evolving needs of businesses and create new mid-density districts for the expanding industrial business sector. 

City of Housing Opportunity

Lastly, Veronica Brown and Winnie Shen from the Housing Division at the DCP discussed how zoning for housing opportunity will achieve some of the long-awaited goals for one of the city’s most prevalent issues: affordable housing. The planners emphasized the need for all neighborhoods across the city to participate in order to remove obstacles to equitable housing development. 

Changes to the zoning regulations would take advantage of existing, yet underutilized, space in the city by simplifying complex zoning restrictions to unlock more housing opportunities in low-, medium-, and high-density districts across all five boroughs. Zoning reform will also accommodate for the diverse needs of owners by allowing more housing types that will serve a wider range of people, such as ADUs, smaller units, and shared housing. 

Existing zoning is extremely limited in accommodating for conversions of underutilized and vacant spaces. In one example, the planners explain how certain rules don’t accommodate for supportive housing if the existing site is an overbuilt high-density building. For instance, a housing non-profit organization that acquires a vacant hotel in Manhattan is subject to conversion obstacles since the current zoning code would classify it as a community facility instead of residential. Zoning reform would change the rules to allow conversions to be more broadly applicable for more supportive housing. 

Vacant hotel in Kips Bay, Manhattan (Department of City Planning)

The plan would also adjust the current waiver threshold for parking requirements, a long-contested rule that many owners try to bypass by developing under the threshold amount of housing units. By restricting parking requirements, owners will be allowed to build more housing on a site instead of setting aside space for parking, providing more opportunity for a larger housing stock across the city. 

Zoning as the Solution

Reforming New York City’s Zoning Resolution is not a new or far-fetched idea. Criticism regarding zoning reform has been in conversations for many years, especially the discriminatory effects of restrictive and exclusionary zoning. New York state, in particular, has been cited as having some of the worst exclusionary zoning in the nation. While the state has been rolling out a number of zoning reform legislation this past year, Mayor Adams is in a unique position to pivot New York City from the inequitable zoning decisions of his predecessors and remove red tape to use zoning as a tool for unlocking more climate resilience, economic growth, and housing opportunities. Though Adams can only do so much through administrative rule changes – broader scale zoning reform would require City Council approval.

To keep up with progress on City of Yes, read more here.

Affordable homes have fewer bedrooms than New Yorkers need

This past summer when preparing to make the move from Texas to New York City, three potential roommates and I began looking for affordably-priced, market-rate, four-bedroom apartments.

We began our search with the thought that ‘the more, the merrier,’ but our hope to decrease our individual rent amount through a big group size while having enough space to ourselves was quickly crushed. As August approached without a signed lease to show for it, we became frantic and panicked as our deadline to move grew closer. Among the many barriers we faced was the fact that four-bedroom apartments were hard to find. Our friends told us to decrease our group size.

We had the flexibility to go down a member. But what about the families in New York City without that luxury? Were we just unlucky, or was it really that hard to find an affordable unit with more than three bedrooms? Was this phenomenon the same for income-restricted affordable units? What kind of trade-offs are low-income housing-seekers facing in their search for privacy, comfort, and shelter?

New York’s new affordable units are disproportionately smaller

According to data from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), NYC has produced more studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units individually than four-, five-, six-, and up-bedroom units combined since 2014. The highest unit production was for one-bedroom units, with two bedrooms being a close second. Studios were the third highest in production with approximately 40,000 fewer units than two-bedroom units. Three-bedroom units were close behind in fourth. However, there was another huge gap in production between three- and four-bedroom units (approximately 24,000 units less than three bedrooms).

Studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units account for approximately 98.9 percent of all affordable housing production since 2014. For a family with more than two children, this presents a problem. While these numbers do not account for affordable units produced prior to 2014 that are still on the market, they do showcase a trend in production that may become an issue as the housing stock ages and is replaced accordingly.

When looking at a breakdown by borough, the Bronx led in affordable housing production for studio, one-, two-, three-, and four- bedroom units. Manhattan was the leader in five-, six- and up  bedroom units. But is the distribution of units by borough and if congruent with their average family size?

NYC’s affordable units are too small for NYC’s families

According to data on family size from the NYC Population FactFinder, the number of bedrooms in new units lag behind the average household size.

I expected the average number of bedrooms in units produced to be low given the amount of one- and two-bedroom units produced; however, I did not expect the averages to be so low in comparison to the average household size. Manhattan had the lowest difference of 0.36, while Staten Island had the biggest difference of 1.32. Every borough produced units that had fewer bedrooms than the average household size would require for each resident to have their own room.

In order for each family member to have a private room, affordable housing developers would have to, on average, add at least one bedroom to their units in production to stay consistent with the average household size. While the extra room can be negated in some cases due to a two-parent household where the parents share a bedroom, approximately 250,000 households in NYC have single-parents.

The problem may not just be developers, however. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) provides a breakdown for how many bedrooms are given depending on household breakdown. But basically any family with children needs at least two bedrooms by those standards, and there aren’t enough family-size units to go around. If families have two children of the same gender or there is a single parent with a child that shares a gender with them, it is often assumed that they will share a room with each other. For example, a family of one mother, two daughters, and a son are assigned the bedroom size of three. Therefore, a private bedroom is seen as a luxury in affordable housing development and it appears housing is not constructed with the average family size in mind — at least not in the sense that everyone can have their own space.

.    .    .

Household size may be changing – but NYC still isn’t keeping up

The issue that the bedroom-to-household-resident ratio presents depends on trends in household size and composition, the unit size in the existing housing stock, and future building patterns.

For some families in a two-parent household, the difference between the bedrooms provided and the household size might not matter as much. Additionally, culture, trends in childbirth, and demographic shifts may reduce the need for more bedrooms. For instance, in some cultures, it is normal to share a room with your siblings. In others, it may not be perceived as an issue as children may be expected to leave the house at the age of 18, and room-sharing is thus seen as temporary. The trend of people having fewer or no children may sway production trends. Or the aging population in NYC may prefer these smaller units.

The city and researchers would be wise to consider these trends when making decisions on what to build and where. Recently, New York City published its initial findings for the 2021 Housing and Vacancy Survey, which included statistics that showed housing production has been decreasing since 1947 — presumably because space is becoming more limited. In data published by Baruch College, the average number of persons per household has fluctuated year-to-year. Understanding the current housing stock will help New York City better plan for the future.

Ultimately, it may be true that four-bedroom units are hard to find in New York City, so my roommates and I made the right decision of splitting to make our housing search easier. If you find yourself in a similar position, just know that the more of you there are, the more barriers there might be.

NYC’s new green infrastructure is missing a huge opportunity to advance environmental justice

When it rains, sewage overwhelms New York’s antiquated sewer system and pours into the rivers that surround the city. It doesn’t take much. Two inches of rain is enough for the sewer system to get overwhelmed. In 2020, New York’s overflow sewage volume totaled more water than the residents of San Francisco use in their homes in a year by several billion gallons. That excess stormwater runoff is a major source of pollution because it increases the risk of flooding and limits where New Yorkers can safely swim, fish, or row. As sea levels rise and New York receives more intense downpours and coastal flooding, this problem only becomes thornier. Without addressing sewer overflow, frontline communities will be flooded with a mixture of stormwaters and raw sewage.

New York’s Department of Environmental protection is focused on reducing stormwater runoff, but so far it has focused on smaller scale street projects and ignored the secondary benefits that trees can provide to neighborhoods, missing a huge opportunity to advance environmental justice.

Stormwater runoff solutions tend to fall into two categories: gray infrastructure and green infrastructure. Gray infrastructure encompasses the traditional sewer treatment tools, such as constructing new sewage treatment plants and new tunnels to hold more stormwater. A majority of the city relies on gray infrastructure – an 1800s combined sewer system design. This system mixes sewage with snowmelt and rainwater and sends all of it to a sewage treatment plant before returning clean water to the city’s waterways. Alternatively, green infrastructure involves creating more parts of the city where stormwater can be captured before it reaches the combined sewer system by engineering new permeable surfaces, green roofs, rain gardens, and bioswales.

In its most recent plan New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) opted for a mixture of green and gray, allocated $2.7 billion to gray infrastructure and $1.6 billion to green infrastructure to spend between 2011 and 2030. Through design contracts and grants to private landowners, DEP has helped complete 10,800 green infrastructure projects across the city. There are another 3,400 projects in either the design or construction phase now, and perhaps more that have yet to be announced.

DEP’s green infrastructure is small and mostly built in the street.

DEP remains focused on meeting its stormwater capture goals. However, projects that are getting built tend to be smaller in size. So far, 93 percent of them have been built on city streets and sidewalks, the area known as right-of-way, instead of onsite at a building or lot of land. Because street bioswales need to be squeezed into streets and sidewalks that already serve many purposes, the projects end up being quite small. Of all documented DEP projects, onsite projects are more than 50 times larger than projects built in the right-of-way. Building mostly in the right-of-way may be leading to DEP building fewer square feet of green infrastructure overall.

It’s not all bad. The right-of-way makes up 30% of all impermeable paving in New York, meaning that placing green infrastructure here can have a huge difference on how much stormwater can seep naturally into the soil and not flow into the sewer system. Projects in the right-of-way are also more visible to the general public (more people pass by a sidewalk rain garden than notice green changes to an apartment roof).

Yet these trends may be limiting the impact of DEP’s efforts. From its most recent quarterly progress report, it seems like DEP “initially focused” primarily on building in the right-of-way and expects to use a broader array of strategies in the future. However, 11 years into building green infrastructure, DEP still seems to be sticking to right-of-way projects, with 92 percent of projects in the pipeline sited on city streets and sidewalks.

The green infrastructure getting built isn’t greening neighborhoods

In New York green spaces and trees are inequitably distributed – poorer neighborhoods of color have less access to both. Planting more trees and making more green space to combat stormwater can help correct this dangerous inequity, lessening the harm of the urban heat island effect and improving air quality for residents.

But so far, only one third of right-of-way green infrastructure projects that DEP has built include a tree. This is true despite most projects having enough room for trees and research showing that including trees in green infrastructure improves stormwater absorption. Even more worrying is that DEP’s future right-of-way projects have even fewer trees. Compared to 35 percent of constructed projects that include trees, only 30 percent of projects under construction and a mere 13 percent of projects in the design phase include trees.

This raises environmental justice concerns: in Brooklyn, the neighborhoods where most of the design-phase projects are located are Crown Heights and Canarsie, two predominantly Black neighborhoods that score highly on the city’s heat vulnerability index. In that borough, only 9 percent of planned right-of-way projects include street trees.

There could be good reasons for the low rate of street trees among these green infrastructure projects. The Parks Department regulates tree spacing along with 19 other criteria, and green infrastructure has its own engineering rules that may make it difficult to plant a tree, including the grade of the street and the expected amount of stormwater that will drain into the soil. So far, DEP has not publicly discussed the value of trees in its green infrastructure.

DEP should prioritize building green infrastructure that provides other environmental benefits to the city beyond capturing stormwater.

There is still time for things to change. DEP still has many years and a good deal of funding that they can spend on green infrastructure, and the tree-less projects in the design phase can still be redesigned. It’s important that no more time is lost on this golden opportunity: DEP should prioritize building green infrastructure that not only captures stormwater but also provides other environmental benefits to the city.

There are many resources available to help in this task, especially from other city agencies. The simplest way to operationalize this goal may be through tree planting. Given trees’ benefits, it seems like an important but simple switch for DEP to begin asking why a green infrastructure project shouldn’t have a tree instead of why it should. The fact that other agencies are trying to tackle this task alongside DEP could open up opportunities for braiding funding, streamlining implementation, and fostering more creative design practices.

Green infrastructure is already a huge step in the right direction compared to gray infrastructure. However, the agency must continue to seek out creative solutions to reap the full benefits of this funding and infrastructure.

How fictional worlds like Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” teach us how to experience our world through transit

I get an overwhelming sense of peace when I watch the closing scene of Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. The first half of the story is jam-packed with action and curiosity. We watch as Chihiro, the young protagonist, explores a confusing and dangerous spirit world on her own, filled with lively soot sprites and rowdy spirits.

My favorite scene comes near the end, as we watch Chihiro walk to a floating platform in the middle of an ocean and wait as a train, skimming across the water, pulls into the station. She finds a seat, the train passes through a world submerged in water with floating houses on grassy islands, passengers leave, and Chihiro patiently watches, soaking it in. Without a single word of dialogue we see a complete world. The sounds of the train moving through water makes viewers feel as though they are there, observing the scene as just another passenger. 

Here Studio Ghibli masters “soft” world building, where there isn’t an explanation to why the train floats atop water, where the railway starts or ends, or the kind of world Chihiro is navigating but it somehow makes sense. Every scene leads up to this moment of reflection, where the audience, along with Chihiro, sits quietly experiencing the spirit world that, through careful observation, makes so little yet so much sense. No narrator needs to spell out the scene, not every unfamiliar part of the world needs to be defined. We can place ourselves not just in a character’s lived experience but also imagine being a part of their world.

We learn about our world in just the same way. Scenes in transit, like Chihiro on the Sea Railway, mimic how we absorb the world around us in our normal everyday lives. Just as we ourselves move through spaces, either on train, or car, bike, walking, fictional characters learn about the world around them instinctively. Our time in transit is a part of the magic of learning about new worlds or a world new to us. Movement in transit and the sights, the sounds, and the smells teach us about our cities. The way we experience those moments matter, they provide even more context to how we live our lives woven into the world around us. 

I think of all of the types of transit that helped to build my favorite worlds, the Polar and Hogwarts Expresses, Appa the flying Bison, the Cat bus, the Magic School bus, and so on. There are so many beloved fictional transit systems that help to complete a world for us. When we see characters moving through their worlds, transit is a place unto itself. More than a vessel, it’s part of the journey. All of these magical transit options in my favorite fictional worlds made me wonder, what if every trip taken helps us “softly” build the world we live in?

Maybe forget about the importance of our daily journeys because it gets redundant, the same commute to and from work, to and from home. Maybe we’ve learned all we could learn from the world we live in daily to find the same kind of magic it feels like watching Chirhiro on her train adventure. Or maybe we simply view our transit as a means to an end, simply a utility in our world.

So why, after watching Spirited Away at least twenty times in 10 years, haven’t I tired of the exact same scene, over and over?

Next time you’re on that mundane commute, I challenge you to think about your favorite fictional world, how characters move through it, and how much value those moments are in understanding the world around them and try looking at your commute through a similar lens. If we start thinking about transportation outside of just routine and utility, we can understand the intrinsic value of the systems that move people and how they inform the way we see and move about our cities.