“I’ve always loved exploring cities on foot,” says Sudeshna Chatterjee, recalling her early fascination with urban life.

“Ever since I became independently mobile as a teenager, I would explore neighbourhoods with interesting buildings, streets, and public spaces and endlessly watch life unfold in them.”

While studying architecture, Sudeshna realised her passion wasn’t in designing individual buildings — it was in shaping how entire cities function. “For me, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts,” she explains. Following a path that allows her to understand, decipher, design, and plan cities became a natural career choice.

Today, she is the Programme Director–Research, Sustainable Cities and Transport at WRI India, where she works at the intersection of environment, climate, urbanisation, and development.

As heat waves and extreme heat events compound in India, we must ask an important question – are Indian cities ready to adapt to extreme heat?

In this interview, Sudeshna talks about how urban planning, nature-based solutions, and community-led action can help Indian cities prepare for heat-related issues.

A rapidly warming reality

In just one single day, on April 30, 2024, around 820 million people experienced 40° Celsius, and 990 million people experienced 38° Celsius in India. This insight comes from a recent WRI India analysis that mapped the rising intensity and duration of heat across the country.

Yet, despite these conditions, heat waves are not recognised as disasters under India’s Disaster Management Act 2005.

“I am sure 2025 will break that record, judging by past trends. Many Indian cities are poised to face the challenge of extreme heat, with temperatures soaring above 35° C for nearly half the year,” Sudeshna predicts.

Who bears the brunt of urban heat?

The health impacts of heat stress are not well understood in India. However, several recent studies have highlighted the significant burden of heat-related illnesses and the necessity for public health measures to address them.

“There is a strong correlation between heat stress and the built environment where people live and work. There is also an urgent need for action to adapt our cities and neighbourhoods to thrive in a warming world,” Sudeshna explains.

India is also witnessing massive urbanisation. Further, the expansion of built-up areas, driven by the construction of buildings and large infrastructure projects, has led to urban heat island (UHI) effects.

This growth often comes at the cost of blue and green spaces, which are vital for accommodating the increasing population density in urban regions, says Sudeshna.

“Most urban development in India, especially in the urban peripheries where cities are growing, is ad hoc, and disregard planning norms and environmental protection. Even where urban planning is shaping urban areas, the integration of green infrastructure that can mitigate heat impacts is often neglected,” adds Sudeshna.

Indian cities have large slum populations that are particularly vulnerable to heat stress because they have high densities, low vegetation and inadequate housing made from highly conductive materials.

Read more: Heat compounds vulnerabilities in low-income neighbourhoods

Building cities that can beat the heat

So how can Indian cities become more heat-resilient? Sudeshna outlines with the example of four core strategies.

By leveraging technology for data-driven solutions, cities can mitigate extreme heat by conducting ward-level vulnerability assessments to identify areas most at risk. Tools like WRI India’s Climate Hazard & Vulnerability Assessment can help map these vulnerabilities, informing climate action plans in large cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru, and smaller ones like Solapur, Nashik and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad).

Expansion of green and blue infrastructure will help increase urban green spaces and restoring water bodies. This can help counter the urban heat island effect and improve air quality. Master plans like Delhi’s Master Plan 2041, which adopted expanding and enhancing the city’s blue-green network, and local initiatives like tree planting campaigns in cities like Kochi are some of the solutions that can help a city increase its green and blue spaces.

Implementing sustainable urban design techniques like urban greening and shading are essential for reducing heat stress at a macro level. Mumbai climate action plan (CAP), India’s first CAP, has aligned its urban planning action track with greening and biodiversity. It recommends increasing the city’s green cover and permeable surfaces to 30-40% of its surface area by 2030, equitable access to green open spaces, and restoration and enhancement of biodiversity.

Sudeshna suggests that a city’s vehicular pollution can be reduced by implementing the National Urban Transport Policy that focuses on non-motorized transport (cycling, walking), building climate-resilient streets with cleaner technologies and expanding public transport.

Building cities that can beat the heat

Sudeshna points to Singapore as a model for embedding greenery into urban design that can help cool the environment.

“The city’s meticulous planning actively promotes the integration of nature into the built landscape, featuring lush sky gardens, vibrant green facades, and thoughtfully designed landscaping. Water features dot the cityscape, while urban farms contribute to sustainability and community engagement,” she explains.

This green infrastructure promotes evapotranspiration, where moisture is released from the earth and plants, creating a natural cooling effect. It also provides essential shade and enhances surface albedo, reflecting more sunlight and heat.

“Singapore also has a comprehensive program called LUSH-Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High Rises, which incentivizes greening across the city through vertical greenery and extensive green roofs, urban farming on rooftops, and sets green plot ratio standards for private developments to safeguard sufficient density of greenery,” she says.

Another example is Rosario, Argentina, which won the 2020-21 Prize for Cities for building inclusive climate resilience and improving access to healthy, local food by converting vacant land into urban farms.

“The city can better withstand heat waves and flooding by revitalizing vacant and abandoned land for food production. Additionally, agriculture provides livelihoods for low-income residents and vulnerable populations, which the city actively supports through outreach efforts,” says Sudeshna.

The communities in the city grow nutritious food for their own use and local markets, cutting emissions by replacing imports. School programs also teach children about local farming, building awareness and community connection.

Using green and blue spaces

Sudeshna discusses three key ideas on how Indian cities can use green and blue spaces better to reduce the urban heat island effect.

Planning multi-scale blue-green infrastructure, as seen in Delhi’s 2041 plan that includes a blue-green policy focus and Bengaluru’s Water and Sewerage Masterplan 2050, which focuses on resource security and climate resilience. Using geospatial tools to identify heat-vulnerable areas, as demonstrated in Mumbai and Kochi can also help with targeted urban greening, explains Sudeshna.

Increase green cover in low-income areas. WRI India’s NDVI satellite imagery analysis shows that higher vegetation indices correlate with lower land surface temperatures. Pilot greening projects were initiated in disadvantaged communities, with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation planting over 400,000 trees across 60 sites.

Replacing heat-trapping materials with permeable and reflective surfaces and implementing green building codes for rooftop gardens in high-density zones. Retrofitting buildings with passive cooling designs, heat-resistant materials, and energy-efficient appliances, should be mandated through building regulations. Promoting solar-reflective roofs in slum areas to reduce heat accumulation at low costs.

What needs to happen next?

Sudeshna outlines three priorities for scaling up urban heat resilience:

Policy recognition and legal backing classify heat as a natural disaster to access disaster relief funds and integrate Heat Action Plans (HAPs) into city masterplans and climate action strategies.

Institutionalising nature-based infrastructure by establishing a task force for inter-ministerial coordination to incorporate nature-based solutions in national missions related to sustainable habitat, water, and agriculture, making urban greenery a key municipal service under the Indian Constitution.

Educating communities on heat risks, leverage local knowledge for adaptable solutions, and promote innovations like parametric insurance for outdoor workers that triggers automatic payouts without the need for complex claims when the temperature breaches a critical threshold to protect outdoor workers. Collaborating among governments, NGOs, and private stakeholders is also crucial for effective implementation, Sudeshna explains.

Foster community engagement in environmental initiatives like the Kawaki initiative in Kochi. Under the Cities4Forests program, the Kochi Municipal Corporation is promoting tree planting to mitigate the impacts of climate change, including heat and flooding, through community-led greening. For this, the city has effectively partnered with the Local Self Government Department of Kerala State, Ayyankali Mission, to employ non-skilled women labourers to maintain the green spaces as part of sustainability planning.

Scale up innovations such as linking maintenance of blue-green infrastructure to urban livelihood programs and parametric insurance.

Read more: How climate change is impacting summer play

Banner image: An aerial view of Jodhpur. Image by Daniel Mennerich via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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Saumitrashinde Editor

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Cities and TownsIndia

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