Introduction

Extract

With some 20 per cent of the world's current population, South Asia's rapidly-expanding urban centres are playing an increasingly important role in the lives of a significant proportion of the world's population. South Asia's urban population grew by 130 million between 2001 and 2013, and according to recent World Bank estimates it is forecast to grow by a further 250 million by 2030. In this context, policy makers are exercised not just about how the region's cities can be transformed to drive economic growth and poverty reduction, but also how they might become “better places” in which to live. Indeed, it is precisely “the often severe stresses brought about by growing urban populations on infrastructure, basic city services, land use, housing, and the environment” and “the inability to adequately address these stresses” that provide “the root cause of messy and hidden urbanisation”. Equally, it is “these same congestion forces that are constraining the region's ability to realize the vision of prosperous and livable [sic] cities”.