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The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) recognizes community participation as an essential component of sustainable planning and development, but there are many challenges to engaging communities, particularly ensuring that marginalized voices are represented. Social networks play an important role in connecting populations who feel they lack power and influence and therefore remain vulnerable, hidden, or dismissed by the powers that be. Yet the mechanisms of social networks are not well understood. This research investigated a group of marginalized farmers facing land development in Delhi, India to understand how social networks impacted their planning participation and livelihood strategies. Employing a mixed-methods approach including semi-structured interviews with 121 farming households, this paper describes how farmers exchanged knowledge and resources through social networks; beliefs and behaviours related to land use planning; and livelihood strategies in response to land development. Households with strong social networks were more likely to report detailed livelihood strategies and had three times the odds of believing they had an influence on land use planning and development compared to households with weaker social networks. Unsurprisingly, more households overall had what we define as "weak" social networks, believed they had no or minimal influence on land use planning and development, and gave vague livelihood strategies in case of development. This research uncovers ways that social networks can impact agency within a community and in the planner-public nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practices and instruments of urban governance are rapidly changing in Delhi, a metropolitan area of 24 million inhabitants characterized by strong socio-economic inequalities. The Delhi metro megaproject and its financing mechanism through land value capture are the prism through which this paper analyses governance patterns at different scales. This model has led to the production of mixed-use spaces in the heart of the city, allowing for a spatial cohabitation of transport functions as well as residential, commercial, and economic uses, following a pattern that has been identified as one of the defining features of a 'new generation of megaprojects' (Diaz Orueta & Fainstein, 2009). It argues that although there has been significant institutional change, notably the entry of private sector actors in mega infrastructure development, careful analysis of the modalities of this mechanism reveal important aspects of continuity including the pre-eminence of techno-scientific planning, minimal stakeholder consultation and conflicts in the public sphere. The Delhi metro case will be situated within the larger Indian context, which has been marked since the 2000s by the emergence of city-centric growth strategies with public investments concentrated in large cities often in the form of public-private partnerships (Kennedy & Zerah, 2008), and the importation and adaptation of international models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sustainable urban infrastructure interventions can help achieve both public health and low-carbon goals in cities. This paper explores the extent to which civil infrastructure (i.e., water, sanitation, energy, transport and building infrastructures) and environmental factors (e.g. air and water quality) associated with these infrastructures shape current urban health outcomes in cities in Asia using Delhi, India as a case study. Current mortality data for Delhi are used as context to estimate the extent to which urban health outcomes are shaped by infrastructure and infrastructure-related environmental factors, some of which could directly or indirectly reduce mortality through low-carbon interventions. Mortality data along with a preliminary survey of expert opinion indicate up to 19 percent of all recorded deaths in Delhi may be infrastructure-related. More detailed epidemiology studies and infrastructure models are needed to confirm these initial findings. The findings suggest public health outcomes may be a large factor in motivating low-carbon development in Asian cities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyses the problems of tenure security for the poor in Delhi by examining the recent programmes and policies adopted by the central and state governments, the orders passed by the judiciary and their implementation at micro-level. It provides an overview of the strategy adopted since the 1950s (after independence from colonial rule) until the late 1990s when the slum population was at its peak. An attempt is made to trace the more recent changes in policy perspective and the dilution of concern for the poor by critically examining the administrative decisions, developmental programmes, court orders, etc. and the method of their implementation. After discussing the broad distribution of households in various settlement categories and their access to tenure security and basic amenities, it argues that the prospect of finding space and even informal tenurial security for the poor would be bleak unless an explicit provision is made within the Master Plan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]