Every season brings a familiar climate stress to Indian cities. Yet, heat and flooding are often addressed separately even though they are shaped by the same decisions about land, buildings, and infrastructure. The challenge is not simply to respond to each challenge, but to rethink how cities grow.AdvertisementThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offers a useful framework: Climate-resilient development, which brings together adaptation, emissions reduction, and sustainable development. India’s Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy submitted to the UNFCCC and the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat provide a framework to integrate climate considerations into urban development. More recently, the Urban Flood Risk Management Programme covering 18 cities and the recognition of heat as a notified disaster, enabling the use of disaster funds for heat resilience, reflect growing attention to climate risks. The next step is to embed these priorities in routine planning and investment. And the opportunity lies in smaller cities.More than half of India’s urban population lives in cities with fewer than one million residents, and estimates indicate that more than 50 per cent of the housing needed by 2070 is yet to be built. Unlike large cities, where retrofitting infrastructure or changing development patterns can be costly and complex, smaller cities have an opportunity to shape how they expand. Decisions made today on roads, drainage, buildings, and public spaces can lock cities into high energy use and climate vulnerability or create more resilient and resource-efficient neighbourhoods.Also Read | Energy security depends on if we electrify, and how we do itRising temperatures increase cooling needs, air-conditioning use, and electricity demand. Yet cooling demand is shaped not only by rising temperatures but also by how cities grow. A study across 88 Indian cities highlights that land use patterns, building density, urban expansion, and green cover influence cooling demand. India’s Cooling Action Plan estimates that building design, energy efficiency, and thermal comfort practices could reduce cooling demand by 20 per cent by 2037-38. So, urban planning and building regulations are important for reducing heat exposure while limiting energy demand.AdvertisementRealising these benefits requires a shift in how cities plan. Development authorities prepare master plans, public works departments design roads, utilities provide services, and municipalities regulate buildings. These decisions are often made across separate departments and addressing them requires two shifts. Climate considerations must become part of routine planning, project appraisal, and investment, and stronger coordination between departments can help align investments and maximise collective benefits.you may likeClimate-resilient development does not always require a separate funding stream; it can begin with how existing municipal revenues, government transfers and scheme-based grants are allocated and designed. Corporate social responsibility funding, impact investment, and development finance can complement public resources by supporting pilots, generating evidence that can be scaled.Spatial data, local risk and vulnerability assessments, and scenario modelling can help identify where risks are concentrated and need focus. But these tools are most effective when combined with local knowledge and people’s lived experience. Understanding how people walk, commute, and use public spaces can help smaller cities build on existing practices to shape low-carbon and resilient growth, rather than replicating infrastructure models from larger cities.Shankar is senior advisor, Climate Resilience and Sustainable Cities at Vasudha Foundation. Sridhar serves on the Advisory Board of SaveLIFE Foundation, and is a core member of the World Economic Forum’s global task force on sustainability and the built environment