Growing up in Delhi, India, Bhartendu was able to get fresh water for his family. The trek took time away from his studies and other activities, a sacrifice that young people in nearby communities with water didn't have to make.
This type of infrastructure inequality is the focus of a new PNAS study. It is one of the first studies to explicitly look at access to infrastructure as opposed to income.
The study used census data to review infrastructure in hundreds of thousands of urban neighborhoods and rural areas in South Africa and India. The results show that the pathway to sustainable development is facing fundamental constraints due to infrastructure inequality.
Biweekly, we highlight three news and research stories about the work we are doing at Yale School of the Environment to achieve sustainable living for ourselves and future generations.
Infrastructure inequalities are a characteristic and not an outcome of urbanization. It is ingrained in the urbanization process, according to the Yale School of the Environment graduate. He is a data scientist in the urban data lab at the university.
Karen Seto, YSE Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science and co-author of the study, says preferential treatment of infrastructure by policy makers is built into policies that lock in social inequalities. Lower-income families are forced to live in communities lacking infrastructure services where housing costs are cheaper because the neighborhoods that are well lit with good drainage will attract families that can afford to live there.
Seto says that the different types of inequalities reinforce each other.
The study found that the inequalities can persist because of the durable nature of infrastructure. The authors note that as urban areas increase globally they will nearly triple in size from 2015-2050.
What policy makers can do to minimize preferential bias when allocating infrastructure?
Christa Brelsford is a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The framing we need to begin to tackle the grand urban challenges we face as a planet is urban systems. Infrastructure inequality within cities is an example of a pair of challenges and opportunities.
More information: Bhartendu Pandey et al, Infrastructure inequality is a characteristic of urbanization, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119890119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Citation: Infrastructure inequality is a challenge to urban sustainability (2022, April 8) retrieved 8 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-infrastructure-inequality-urban-sustainability.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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