Janaagraha's framework of City-Systems


"City-Systems" refers to invisible, complex and inter-related elements of laws and policies, institutional frameworks and processes that underlie and drive Quality of Life in a city as experienced by city-residents. Quality of life is a direct result and consequence of the quality of City-Systems. To fix the quality of life in our cities and towns, we need to therefore necessarily fix their City-Systems.

Janaagraha's framework of City-Systems has four interrelated parts:

• Urban Planning & Design
• Urban Capacities & Resources
• Empowered & Legitimate Political Representation
• Transparency, Accountability & Participation

The Annual Survey of India's City-Systems

The Annual Survey of India's City-Systems (ASICS) is informed by Janaagraha's framework of City-Systems. ASICS is the first ever comprehensive survey of Indian cities and their city-systems based on a checklist comprising over one hundred parameters. In its inaugural edition ASICS covered eleven Indian cities- Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Surat. New York and London served as the two global benchmarks.

An integral part of ASICS is a citizen perception survey titled 'Voice of India's Citizens' (VOICE) Survey carried out in the same eleven cities covered by ASICS.

ASICS was advised by a stellar Jury


    Jury Member

    Adi Godrej
    Chairman, Godrej Group

    Chair of the Jury

    Arun Maira
    Member, Planning Commission of India

    Jury Member

    Baijayant Panda
    Member of Parliament

    Jury Member

    Dr M Ramachandran
    Former Secretary, MoUD
    Government of India

    Jury Member

    Ireena Vittal
    Former Partner, McKinsey & Co. and Independent Director

The ASICS Event

Janaagraha unveiled the inaugural edition of ASICS in New Delhi on Thursday 4 April 2013 before a distinguished audience comprising elected representatives, senior policy makers and urban administrators, business leaders, representatives from multilateral institutions, civil society and the media.

The Panel of Experts

The ASICS event had a unique format with global domain experts delivering key note speeches on each of the four components of Janaagraha's city-systems framework, followed by conversations with ASICS Jury members.



    Liu Thai Ker
    Former Chief Executive and Chief Planner, Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority



    Victor Vergara
    Lead Urban Specialist, World Bank Institute



    David Becker
    Director, Election Initiatives, The Pew Charitable Trusts

City-Systems: Global Perspectives

Master Planning in Singapore Liu
Thai Ker
Building Urban Management   Capacities in    Global Cities    Victor
Vergara
Participatory Budgeting in Brazil Victor
Vergara
Voter List Management in USA David
Becker

Click on each wing to watch the presentation

Global experiences from Singapore, United States, Brazil, Mexico and China revealed one underpinning message - City-Systems of Indian cities have much to learn from those of global peer cities given that they all face many common challenges.

ASICS Summary Score

Ahd Blr Che Del Hyd Jpr Kpr Kol Mum Pun Sur NYC Lon
Urban Planning and Design (UPD) 2.5 2.9 2.2 3.9 2.9 2.5 2.8 4.2 2.6 0.7 2.5 8.8 8.8
Urban Capacities and Resources (UCR) 2.5 0.9 2.2 2.9 2.1 2.4 1.8 2.0 2.7 2.6 2.4 9.9 8.1
Empowered and Legitimate Political Representation (ELPR) 3.2 1.9 4.1 2.2 2.6 4.5 4.0 4.3 3.8 3.8 3.2 9.4 9.3
Transparency, Accountability and  Participation (TAP) 1.5 3.0 2.9 1.2 4.4 1.2 3.1 2.9 3.3 3.2 1.4 8.9 8.1

Indian Cities - Ahd-Ahmedabad, Blr-Bangalore, Che-Chennai, Del-Delhi, Hyd-Hyderabad, Jpr-Jaipur, Kpr-Kanpur, Kol-Kolkata, Mum-Mumbai, Pun-Pune, Sur-Surat

Global Benchmark Cities -NYC-New York City, Lon-London

Speakers

Mr Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission of India and Chair of the ASICS Jury, and Mr NR Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus, Infosys Limited both of whom addressed the gathering. They also gave away the VOICE Awards.

Besides the above, Mr Raghavan Srinivasan, Managing Director, Indonesia, TNS Global presented the results of the VOICE Survey and Srikanth Viswanathan, Manager-Advocacy, Janaagraha presented on the City-Systems framework and the State of India's City-Systems.

ASICS Snapshots

VOICE Awards

The ASICS event also witnessed the announcement of the VOICE Awards for best performing cities based on VOICE Survey that measured citizens' perception of quality of life and quality of city-systems.

Voice of India's Citizens (VOICE) Trophies: Roll of Honour


Quality of City-Systems


    SURAT
    AHMEDABAD
    CHENNAI

Quality of Life


    SURAT
    PUNE
    AHMEDABAD

ASICS in Media

  • "Global Solutions for India's Biggest Cities"
    -     The Economic Times, Apr 05, 2013

  • "Indian cities lag in managing systems"
    -     MINT, Apr 05, 2013

  • "City Bangalored by its leadership"
    -     The Times of India, Apr 06, 2013

  • "India's best and the worst cities according to Janaagraha Study"
    -     The Economic Times, Apr 04, 2013

  • "Taking stock of India's urban decline, drawing attention to cities' issues"
    -     Business Standard, Apr 05, 2013

  • "Delhi scores low on transparency"
    -     Times of India - Delhi, Apr 05, 2013

 

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