Chennai joined the 100 Resilient Cities Network in 2014. This opportunity made it possible for Chennai to analyze the city’s vulnerabilities and challenges, evaluate responsiveness and understand how to build resilience to these vulnerabilities.

Six Discovery Areas or Priority Areas were highlighted at the end of Phase 1 in order to get a deeper, more targeted understanding of Chennai’s strengths and weaknesses. One priority area was found to be Civic Engagement.

This report presents a succinct account of the key challenges that Chennai citizens face while engaging with civic issues, and an account of how citizens, communities, businesses and systems we can survive and thrive in spite of these challenges.

Citizens must be aware of how their behavior impacts their everyday life in the city – unconscious use of water, improper disposal of waste, failure to follow traffic rules and regulations etc. directly impacts the day to day functioning of the city. It is also widely known that the most socially vulnerable populations are the ones who suffer most severely. Resilience efforts, therefore, must acknowledge areas and citizens from all walks of life.

Author: Resilient Chennai. CityWorks, Okapi Advisory & Research