No abstract

The global pandemic has an inherently urban character. The UN-Habitat's publication of a Response Plan for mollification of the SARS-CoV-2 based externalities in the cities of the world testifies to that. This article takes the UN-Habitat report as the premise to carry out an empirical investigation in the four major metro cities of India. The report's concern with the urban character of the pandemic has underlined the role of cities in disease transmission. In that wake, the study demarcates factors at the sub-city level that tend to jeopardize the two mandatory precautionary measures during COVID-19-Social Distancing and Lockdown. It investigates those factors through a Covid Vulnerability Index. The Index devised with the help of Analytic Hierarchy Process demarcates the low, moderate, high, and very high vulnerable city sub-units. Secondly, UN-Habitat's one of the major action areas is evidence-based knowledge creation through mapping and its analysis. In our study, we do it at a granular scale for arriving at a more nuanced understanding. Thus, in harmony with the UN-habitat's we take the urban seriously and identify the gaps that need to be plugged for the pandemic cities of now and of the future.

The global pandemic has an inherently urban character. The UN-Habitat’s awareness of it has led to the publication of a Response Plan for mollification of the disease-induced externalities in the cities of the world. This article takes the UN-Habitat report as the premise to carry out an empirical investigation in the four metro cities of India. The report’s concern with the urban character of the pandemic has underlined the role of cities in disease transmission. In that wake, the study demarcates factors at the sub-city level that tend to jeopardize the two mandatory precautionary measures during COVID-19 – Social Distancing and Lockdown. It investigates those factors that bring deprived locales parallel to COVID-19 induced vulnerability. Secondly, UN-Habitat’s one of the major action areas is evidence-based knowledge creation through mapping and its analysis. In our study, we do it at a more granular scale than the city so a more nuanced understanding can be arrived at. Thus, in tune with the UN-habitat’s we have embarked on a detailed study of the four metro cities in India that are simultaneously the densest in the global south.