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1. Introduction
Climate change is a global phenomenon, emerging trends of which indicate a global rise in human induced warming, higher than the natural warming of Earth – a trend that is estimated to grow at significant rate. Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014) highlights the growth of global population from 4bn to 7bn, a 75% increase since 1970. During the period, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 82%, with an annual increase of 2.2% in past 1 decade.
The Paris Climate Agreement 2015 further supports and strengthens the cause of climate change mitigation and shifts it from a global scale issue to one of development at urban scale. This is not a new finding. In 2008, urban development became central to the international discourse on climate change, when global urban population increased by 50%, while total GHG emissions increased by 70%. Four cases for this situation were identified: land use and land cover change, transportation, building construction and pollution related to industry. These four categories of activities coincide with areas affected by urban planners and urban planning in terms of development, adaptation to climate change and mitigation of future risks. Essentially, cities and climate change are intertwined and urban planning plays a vital role in this equation.
The period 2007–2008 also saw the publication of a tremendous amount of literature and research on cities and climate change. In India, a plethora of research has been produced, which study geographies of emissions, changing climate, impacts of climate change on agriculture, urban drainage, biodiversity and regional temperature rise. However, only a few try to examine beyond these areas of study and assess climate change in terms of urban development patterns. The need to study climate change and the impact of urban development on climate change becomes more important today as cities cover less than 3% of the Earth's surface but contribute over 70% of GHG emissions and account for 75% of global energy consumption (UN-Habitat, 2011). Moreover, this trend of urban growth is forecast to continue as rural population declines, especially for the rapidly growing economy and demography of India.
In 2015, India emerged at the forefront of climate talks at the Convention of Parties and the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk...
