Blog

Xerxes Rao is the Vice President at the Urban Management Centre (UMC), where he leads work at the intersection of urban governance, planning, and community resilience. An architect and urban planner with over 20+ years of experience, he has worked across India and South Asia on projects ranging from master plans and smart cities to local area plans and community-driven infrastructure. His career has been defined by developing policies, advising governments, and implementing transformative programs to make Indian cities more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient.  His work with communities and governments at city, state, and national levels focuses on strengthening institutions, capacitating officials and planners, and pushed for systems that make resilience a day-to-day practice.

1. You’ve worked across urban planning, governance, and capacity building. In your view, what does a resilient city truly look like? Beyond infrastructure, what are the core elements that make cities adaptive and people-centered? From your experience, what does city resilience really mean in the Indian or Global South context, and why is it important to look beyond climate alone?

Cities are not made of roads, drains, and flyovers alone, they are made of people. To think about resilience is to begin with a people-first lens. In every city, resilience is already present in the everyday practices of survival and adaptation. Think of Mumbai, even when floods bring the city to a standstill, the trains run, taxis ferry passengers, and life somehow pushes forward. Or Odisha in 1999, when the super cyclone reshaped the entire state’s disaster management system and left a lasting imprint on the country.

Resilience is not a project to be ticked off. It is a web of social, institutional, and physical systems that together uphold dignity, livelihoods, and the ability to absorb shocks. Without this, interventions are just band-aids that peel away with the next crisis.

One story that stays with me is from Ahmedabad in the late 1990s. The city experimented with slum networking, not by granting tenure but by extending basic services like streetlights, paved roads, drainage and water supply. Residents were asked to pay property tax in return. Overnight, those settlements became part of the mainstream city fabric. What changed wasn’t just infrastructure, it was a sense of ownership, a promise that eviction would not come tomorrow. That, to me, is resilience, when communities begin to see themselves as part of the city’s future, not outside of it.

Our work on the Chennai Climate Action Plan and mainstreaming climate resilience into its Master Plan showed that true resilience means integrating climate thinking into everyday planning decisions. The assessment showed that even with low floods in Chennai approx. 78% of the slums will be impacted due to flooding. Programs like DAY-NULM, Sanitation Workers safety scheme in Odisha, TN and MoSJE’s NAMASTE scheme remind us that resilience in the Global South is as much about livelihoods, inclusion, and dignity as it is about physical adaptation. It’s where governance, equity, and community capacity come together.

For resilience to deepen, we must also look at governance and learning. Decentralized systems matter because disasters don’t wait for a centralized response. Cities must learn from each other, adapt constantly, and most importantly, build the capacity of the staff who keep them running. Without trained and trusted municipal staff, the backbone of resilience is fragile. And at the heart of it all lies finance. Most Indian cities still depend on external grants, yet true resilience demands financial sustainability.

Resilient cities, in my view, are not only about surviving floods, fires, or earthquakes. They are about ensuring livelihoods, building systems that last, and creating a sense of belonging. They are about dignity as much as drains.

2. What are some of the biggest day-to-day stresses that Indian cities face - socioeconomic, institutional, infrastructural, or environmental - that often get overlooked when we talk about resilience?

When we talk about resilience, the spotlight often falls on bigger disasters like floods, heatwaves, and cyclones. But the stresses that chip away at Indian cities day after day are often quieter, and they weigh most heavily on the urban poor.

Many of the stresses in our cities are not dramatic “shocks” but slow-moving pressures - water scarcity, informal housing, insecure livelihoods, and institutional fragmentation. These everyday vulnerabilities, especially in informal settlements, often get overlooked. In informal settlements, resilience is tested not only by climate shocks but by everyday struggles. A broken sewer that overflows into the street, poor drainage that leaves homes waterlogged, air pollution that seeps into households, these are not just abstract problems. They affect livelihoods, health, and dignity. Women engaged in home-based work find their productivity collapsing in the heat. Families already on thin margins end up spending more on healthcare because their surroundings make them sick. These are the small shocks that rarely make headlines but steadily erode resilience.

I saw this first-hand in a project we undertook “Moving India Towards Sanitation for All”. We mapped nearly 200 slums across Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Odisha. Household by household, we tracked sanitation systems, water access, infrastructure gaps. What struck me was not just the data, but how maps could make the invisible visible. For government officials pressed for time and resources, seeing these conditions laid out visually made decision-making easier and more urgent. But mapping isn’t a one-time fix. Cities are dynamic. Settlements grow, systems break, new stresses emerge. Evidence and data need to be continuously updated if they are to guide meaningful action. Without that, plans remain static while life in the slums keeps moving.

While preparing the framework for resilience, adaptation, and mitigation for Chennai, we mapped vulnerabilities across slums, linking them with socio-economic and environmental data. This helped identify where urban poor populations are most exposed to heat stress, flooding, and livelihood insecurity. Similarly, our work on housing and welfare for more than 50,000+ sanitation workers showed that resilience is also about improving living conditions, access to services, and dignity at work.

To me, resilience is not just about preparing for the next cyclone or flood. It is about recognizing and addressing the everyday stresses that quietly shape urban life. If we can build systems that respond to these daily realities of dignified sanitation, reliable water, and healthier living conditions, then the shocks, when they come, will be easier to absorb.

Cities face constant, everyday pressures - water scarcity, informal housing, poor service delivery, and insecure livelihoods, that rarely make headlines. Strengthening housing, urban services, and livelihoods for sanitation workers and informal communities is key. True resilience means addressing these slow burning stresses - not just reacting to disasters.

3. Urban challenges, whether water stress, waste management, or climate risks, cut across multiple sectors. From your UMC experience, how can platforms like the ClimateRISE Alliance or city networks help break silos and increase collaboration between governments, researchers, and communities?

Urban challenges are interconnected - water, waste, mobility, housing, and climate cannot be addressed in isolation. When we talk about resilience or collaboration, it is easy to forget the people who remain outside the frame. Migrants and informal workers, for instance, often live and work in cities without a political voice. Without voter IDs or basic entitlements, they are invisible to the very systems meant to serve them. I remember working with a group of waste pickers in Odisha who lacked even a proof of residence or date of birth certificate. For them, getting an Aadhaar card wasn’t just paperwork, it was the first step towards visibility. Once that single entitlement was secured, doors opened - bank accounts, ration cards, election IDs. What followed was not just access, but dignity and recognition.

This is why networks matter. A lone individual, or even a single organization, can push only so far. But when voices come together, they amplify each other. I’ve seen this through alliances like the NFSSM, which began with a handful of organizations and quickly grew into a powerful collective shaping India’s sanitation landscape. Collaboration created trust, avoided duplication, and accelerated knowledge exchange, lessons that platforms like ClimateRISE can carry forward.

Peer-to-peer learning has been equally transformative. I recall the CityLinks programme in the 2000s, where Indian officials were paired with counterparts in U.S. cities. They learned not just from successes but from mistakes and came back to adapt solutions in local contexts. That exchange of practice and perspective is what keeps ideas alive.

Through our experience in mainstreaming climate action in Chennai’s Master Plan, we created a model that can be adapted by other cities to integrate resilience thinking within statutory planning frameworks.

The value of these networks lies in their ability to convene governments, researchers, practitioners, and communities. Together, they generate evidence that no single actor could build alone, evidence governments are more likely to trust when it comes from a collective. And perhaps most importantly, they ensure that the benefits flow outward to waste pickers, sanitation workers, women, migrants, planners, officials, the many who make our cities function.

At UMC, we’ve always believed in “learning by doing” and “sharing by learning.” Our collaborations with multiple city governments have demonstrated that when knowledge flows horizontally between peers and practitioners, it builds trust, accelerates innovation, and ultimately strengthens resilience at scale.

Collaboration, at its best, is not a buzzword. It is a lived practice of trust, learning, and collective voice. And it is the only way forward.

4. Public perception often shapes policy action. How can media and communicators highlight resilience-building efforts in cities be it around waste workers, water security, or community-driven initiatives to influence change at scale?

In today’s world, media and communication may be the most powerful levers we have to create change at scale. A well-told story can make invisible workers visible, shift public opinion, and even influence policy. Over the years, I have seen how documentaries, short films, and even a two-minute video can do what reports and presentations often cannot - move hearts.

One story I often return to is about a trans person entrusted with managing a community toilet. We made a short film(https://shorturl.at/fPE1k) about her journey and suddenly, people began asking: Who is she? How did this work? Could it be replicated elsewhere? A simple video opened space for dialogue and imagination. In another instance, a campaign series dramatized the lives of sanitation workers and waste pickers. Watching characters drawn from their own realities on screen created trust more quickly than months of outreach could. People could see themselves and believe that change was possible.

Stories move people more than statistics. Through U-LEARN (www.u-learn.in) and the Jalasathi Knowledge Portal, we’re documenting how local communities, especially women and frontline workers, are driving change. When media amplifies these human-centered stories on waste, water, and climate action it helps people see resilience as a lived experience, not just a technical term. Communication is key to turning awareness into collective action. You can refer to https://www.youtube.com/@UrbanManagementCentre for more videos, documentaries and films on various urban issues.

Yet too often, the media focuses only on tragedy - deaths in sewers, collapsing systems, and loss. These stories must be told, but they cannot stand alone. Why not also tell us about the thousands of sanitation workers who return home safely each day, or the programs that give waste pickers new opportunities? Positive stories do not erase hardship, they remind us of what is worth building.

Communication is not just about amplifying issues; it is also about shaping perception. And perception shapes policy. If we want resilience to be more than a buzzword, we must tell stories that combine evidence with humanity, that resonate differently with different audiences, and that are returned to again and again. Because one story rarely fits all.

For me, the task is clear - to keep telling stories that dignify, illuminate, and inspire, until the workers who keep our cities alive are no longer forgotten.

5. Lastly, what gives you optimism when you look at the trajectory of Indian cities? Are there particular policies, practices, or youth-led initiatives that inspire you?

What gives me hope is the growing recognition that resilience is not optional - it’s central to how we plan, govern, and live in cities. Across India, we’re seeing young professionals, administrators, and communities take ownership of this agenda. When I think of Indian cities, I don’t just think of “hope”, I think of inevitability. This transformation is going to happen. The question is: how responsibly will we shape it?

As professionals, as citizens, we must recognize that even the smallest decision carries weight. I often remind my students in urban planning that a single line you draw on a map, a road, a drain, or a boundary can affect lives for decades. That is the power, and the responsibility, of shaping cities.

What gives me optimism is the new generation. Young people are vibrant, restless, and willing to experiment. They are less constrained by caste, creed, or gender, and more focused on ideas and action. That energy, if nurtured, will define the next phase of urban India. At LBSNAA, where we engage with officer trainees from across various services, it’s heartening to see how climate action is now part of their training and storytelling. These future decision-makers are asking sharper questions about equity, inclusion, and sustainability. They are willing to rethink traditional approaches and bring climate sensitivity into the core of governance.

Policy too is moving. At the highest levels of government, there is momentum, from local, hyper-local initiatives echoing the Swadeshi spirit, to resilience planning that absorbs global shocks. We’ve seen that good policies can transform lives, and not-so-good ones can stall progress. This makes the role of civil society organizations, NGOs, and citizens all the more critical - to engage, to hold accountable, and to co-create.

Resilience, after all, is not a short-term project. It is embedded in our everyday lives, in the institutions we build, and the people who run them. Cities, countries, and even offices are only as strong as the people who carry them forward. So, yes, things are happening slowly but surely. The trajectory is bending toward something better. What remains is for us to stay accountable, keep learning, and keep building.

The convergence of policy shifts, institutional openness, and youthful energy makes me deeply optimistic. Indian cities may be complex, but that very complexity is also their strength - diverse, adaptive, and full of possibility.