Risk and Resilience in Indian Cities: Floods, Heat Islands and the Work of Professor R.B. Singh

All too often, residents of Indian cities have experienced the physical environment in the form of hazards, such as floods and the increasing effects of climate change, that may threaten human life and livelihoods. This notion of the environment as hazard is part of a complex interaction between city dwellers and nature, and hence there are multiple, and often conflicting, relationships between people and nature, within and on the fringes of cities. These interactions can pose difficult choices for city planners and represent a key challenge in the evolution towards more sustainable communities. Geographers have long studied these physical risks affecting urban dwellers in India, with one of the leading researchers being the late Professor R.B. Singh at the University of Delhi. This chapter draws upon the work of R.B. Singh, a major figure in Indian geography in the last three decades, to examine two particular hazards closely associated with climate change, namely increased frequency of extreme events producing severe floods in various Indian cities, and urban heat islands (UHIs). The chapter examines the chief contributions of R.B. Singh to understanding the impact of climate change on people and livelihoods in India and then focuses on the two specific risks affecting urban residents. In both cases, special attention is directed at attempts to adapt and mitigate risk. With respect to increased incidence of floods, such attempts often have to address poor planning decisions that have put citizenry at risk by building on flood plains, as in the case of Chennai’s floods in 2015, or failing to maintain urban drainage systems, as for recent flooding in Mumbai in 2022. With respect to urban heat islands, the chapter draws upon the work by Singh and researchers at Aligarh Muslim University, which has revealed long-term trends and possibilities for both adaptation and mitigation. As part of this chapter, a bibliography of R.B. Singh’s work has been produced.