Thiruvananthapuram tops city governance ranking: ASICS

March 2, 2017

Thiruvananthapuram, capital of Kerala has topped in city governance ranking of the Annual Survey of India’s City Systems (ASICS) 2016 conducted by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.
This year it was the fourth edition the annual survey which had evaluated 21 major cities from the 18 states. It highlighted inadequacies in urban governance that could affect public service delivery and quality of life.

What is ASICS?

The ASICS is designed to help city leaders pin point issues in urban governance in their cities and help them chalk out a reform roadmap to make them more livable. It ranks citites in the scale of 0 to 10 scale. The better scores of city in the survey, indicates it will be able to deliver better quality of life to citizens over the medium and long-term. The major parameters of the survey included urban capacities and resources, urban planning and design, empowered and legitimate political representation, and transparency, accountability and participation.

Highlights of 2016 ASICS

Thiruvananthapuram topped in 2016 Survey. Pune is ranked second, up two ranks from 2015. Kolkata retained its third rank.
National capital Delhi slipped to ninth rank from earlier seventh. Bhubaneswar was the biggest gainer in the 2016 survey as it jumped by eight places to the 10th spot compared to 2015 position.
Bengaluru dropped by four places to 16th rank. Ludhiana, Jaipur and Chandigarh retain their previous last three positions of 19th, 20th and 21st respectively.
Cities in India continue to score poorly across their city-systems framework with their average scores of between 2.1 and 4.4 on 10 scale. London and New York score 9.3 and 9.8 on the same parameters.
Changes in planning laws are needed to address the issues challenging the efficient planning of the cities to deliver a high quality of life to citizens.