Climate Change Impact: Summer Indicates The Need For Citizen-First Humane Cities
· Free Press Journal
The heat this summer is not just uncomfortable. It is a warning. Step outside for a few minutes and the city feels harder to endure. A short walk drains you. Waiting in the open feels longer. Stepping out itself becomes a decision.
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For many, there is no escape. Those of us who move between air-conditioned homes, offices, cars, and gyms are insulated from this reality. And it has distanced us from how the majority actually experiences the city.
The delivery rider waiting in the sun, the security guard at the gate, the street vendor under a sheet, the construction worker on exposed concrete, and civic workers who keep the city running. They are not the margins of the city. They are the city.
Planning failures and rising heat
Air conditioners have become substitutes for planning. Gated spaces have become substitutes for public quality. We have adjusted individually instead of insisting collectively.
In our cities, we have treated land as a commodity and climate as an inconvenience. Over the past two decades, Mumbai has expanded its built footprint dramatically while losing a significant share of its green cover. Dense areas trap heat and routinely feel several degrees hotter than greener pockets. This is the urban heat island effect in lived form.
We use the word ‘sustainable’ often. We practise it rarely. Planting saplings is not sustainability. Protecting mature trees is. Announcing projects is not sustainability. Maintaining them is. Calling a development green does not make it so. Building systems that actually cool the city, store water, and support human movement does.
Water bodies and shade matter
Start with water. Why is rainwater harvesting still not universally mandatory and enforced across urban India? The technology is affordable. It can even store water beneath roads and public spaces. Yet we allow rainwater to flood streets briefly and disappear for months.
Why are lakes, ponds and drains not desilted every year with discipline? Why do we wait for flooding to remind us that water bodies are infrastructure?
Then look at shade. In a tropical country, shade is basic urban infrastructure. Yet our footpaths are broken, encroached or missing. Where they exist, they are exposed to direct sun. We install artificial covers that trap heat instead of planting tree canopies that reduce it.
Citizen-first cities need walkability
A citizen-first city would do the opposite. It would build continuous, shaded, walkable footpaths. It would place seating under natural green canopies. It would ensure that a person can pause, rest, and recover without having to enter a commercial space. It would recognise that walking is the most basic form of movement.
A few shrubs on a divider do not change a city’s temperature. Connected green cover across roads, sidewalks, and neighbourhoods does. Urban forests, rooftop greenery, vertical gardens and permeable surfaces are no longer optional ideas. They are essential responses to rising heat.
New high-rises should be mandated to integrate vertical green gardens as part of their core design, not as cosmetic additions. Commercial establishments should be given a clear five-year window to retrofit such green façades and shaded exteriors as a civic obligation.
Public spaces and civic empathy
Even where we already have civic gardens, we underuse their potential. Many lack dense tree cover, usable shade or adequate seating. These spaces must be reimagined as inclusive, well-maintained green lungs that are open and welcoming to all citizens. Not everyone can afford a private club to walk or simply sit under trees. Public green spaces must fill that gap with dignity.
There is also a quieter erosion that policy alone cannot fix. The decline of everyday civic empathy. The simple act of placing a matka of water outside a building. Offering a glass of water to those who come to our buildings or pass by. Creating small shaded waiting areas in housing societies. They are signals of whether we still respect humanity.
Heat is now a public health issue
This is no longer just about urban design; it is a visible public health strain. Heat is already reducing work capacity, affecting outdoor workers the most, and quietly stressing the elderly and children. As summers intensify, cities are becoming harder to function in, not just uncomfortable. Those who contribute least to climate impact are the ones who endure it the most.
Urban outcomes are shaped at the municipal level, but citizens are not passive either. We like to measure development in concrete and glass. History offers a harsher lesson. Civilisations that disrupted ecological balance paid the price, not in theory but in lived decline.
Action must replace intent
We also hide behind economic arguments. Climate change affects inflation, productivity, and growth. All valid. But these remain abstractions until they translate into heat stress, illness, and lost working hours. A city that is physically harder to function in is a city that is economically weaker, no matter how impressive its skyline.
If there is one recent lesson we cannot ignore, it comes from the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments demonstrated that when they decide to act, they can move with speed and force. Systems can be enforced. Behaviour can change. The next few summers must show visible change, not just intent.
Increase and protect urban green cover with continuity. Make rainwater harvesting compulsory and enforced. Restore and maintain water bodies every year. Build shaded, walkable footpaths that are actually usable. Create green corridors that connect entire neighbourhoods. Design cities for people first, not private vehicles. Build public cooling and resting spaces that are accessible to all.
Much of what needs to be done is neither unknown nor unavailable. The impacts of climate change are well-documented, and the solutions are already in the public domain. We can continue to retreat into controlled environments and treat the rest as someone else’s problem. Or, we can decide that a city must first serve its citizens, all of them, and act like it.
(Dr Srinath Sridharan is a policy researcher and corporate adviser. X: @ssmumbai)