Building Liveable Cities: Tamil Nadu Case on Nature based Wastewater Solutions

The Liveable City concept at the heart of this session proposes an integrated approach to urban transformation, aggregating around 75 parameters from global and national standards. The framework evaluates cities across four pillars defined as environmental sustainability, infrastructure resilience, socio-economic equity, and governance through a unified scoring and visualization matrix that helps city leaders identify vulnerabilities, prioritize interventions, and track progress toward NDC and liveability goals.

In Tamil Nadu, the framework was applied through a baseline assessment across six cities using multi-criteria analysis, geospatial mapping, and stakeholder consultations. Wastewater management emerged as the highest-priority gap, linked to Scope 3 emissions, public health risks, and flood resilience. The proposed intervention focuses on scalable Nature-based Solutions, including constructed wetlands, bio-retention systems, and riparian restoration, co-designed with Siruthuli NGO.

Launched via the Chief Minister's March 2025 Green and Liveable City Report, concept exemplifies science-policy-practice co-production, fostering partnerships across government, NGOs etc