The globally fast-spreading novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is now testing the abilities of all countries to manage its widespread implications on public health. To effectively contain its impacts, a nation-wide temporary lockdown was enforced in India. The resultant panic buying and stockpiling incidents together with spread of misinformation created a sense of food insecurity at local level. This paper discusses a specific case of Nagpur from the worst affected Maharashtra state of India, wherein the urban–rural food supply chains were reportedly disrupted. Based on formal interviews with local government officials, a month-long timeline of COVID-19 outbreak in Nagpur was studied along with the consequent government initiatives for maintaining public health and food supply. While the city residents were confined to their homes, this study then assessed their perceived food security at household level, along with their “Immediate Concerns” and “Key Information Sources”. Through online surveys at two different time intervals, the concerns of “Food and Grocery” were found to be rising, and “Government Apps and Websites” were identified as the most reliable source of information. Based on the research findings, the authors further suggest specific policy recommendations for addressing the immediate and long-term concerns related to food systems in Nagpur.

The evolving concept of ‘Smart Cities’ (SC) is today gaining global momentum in scientific and policy arenas. With the rising potential for jobs and improved lifestyle, these fast-growing cities are witnessing an ever-increasing concentration of populations and economic activities. However, the core aspect of sustainability is often overshadowed in SC by the components of economic growth. In view of the rising water, energy, and food (collectively referred to as WEF) demands in cities and the interlinkages between WEF systems, this study aims to highlight the role of SC in enhancing WEF resource efficiency from a nexus perspective. To study the current trends of SC developments first, a specific case of proposed Nagpur smart city (India) is reviewed based on document analysis and preliminary discussions with local government officials. Thereafter, bibliometric analysis (based on Scopus data) is conducted to establish a comprehensive understanding of existing SC research in varying domains of interlinked WEF systems. While the proposed Nagpur smart city is observably focused on city-centric goals with a high emphasis on infrastructure development, this study underlines the need for environmental resource conservation at a transboundary level. The key opportunities for optimizing the WEF nexus in Nagpur are then highlighted in reference to the bibliometric analysis.

Twenty-first century rural development (RD) demands a new paradigm of sustainability capable of addressing the difficulties and leveraging on the possibilities, such as climate change, demographic shift, international competitiveness, and rapid technological progress. Amidst these challenges, it is necessary to have a guiding framework from a long-term perspective that aids the integration of current RD policies while allowing space for location and community-specific innovations for implementing sustainable and resilient development strategies. India has witnessed several schemes and programmes for RD with exclusive objectives, varied focus areas, and separate domains, resulting in compartmentalisation in policy frameworks and disjointed implementation. Such initiatives were also often ideated from an urban perspective when it came to peri-urban rural areas or offered a generalist rural perspective (when referring to other rural regions, including those nested in ecological zones, thereby disregarding their local relevance). Accordingly, this study proposes a synchronised SMART village framework to tailor existing RD approaches for sustainable transformations aligned with the sustainable development goals and with a possibility of scaling its applicability in the local context. We initially conducted a bibliometric analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the emerging transformative approaches to RD, such as smart village (SV). Though in its nascent stage, the SV initiatives in India primarily envision information and communication technology enabled transformations in rural areas, often forcing villages to establish the relevance of such interventions. The study recognises key challenges to RD in India by using the problem tree analysis and further defines a SMART village framework that can be catalytic in transforming rural areas towards a sustainable and resilient state.

Urban and rural areas within a regional space are closely linked through a variety of linkages including the flow of people. The increasing pace of development transformations with discrete planning of urban and rural areas has raised serious concerns for achieving coordinated development at the regional level. In that regard, the concept of Regional Circular and Ecological Sphere (R-CES) has recently been introduced by the Government of Japan to localize the flow of resources between urban and rural areas. To understand the applicability of the R-CES approach, this study aims to visualize the flow of people within a defined cluster of Nagpur Metropolitan Area (NMA) in India. A “home interview method” Origin-Destination survey was adopted to analyze the flow patterns of people and their key purposes. Based on the collected information, flows of people were represented using a desire line diagram in ArcGIS 10.4.1. The study results revealed that the maximum flow of the rural and forest population is directed towards nearby or distant urban settlements to avail the higher-order urban services. Based on the key R-CES principles of a low-carbon society, circular economy, and harmony with nature, the authors suggest feasible directions for localizing the urban–rural flow of people in NMA.

Twenty-first century cities in developing countries have been facing development challenges as a result of their fast-growing urban populations and inefficient infrastructures, as well as growing difficulties created by climate change. Though concern for integrating disaster risk management approaches into development planning has been expressed in various policy documents and studies, exact methods of such integration at the spatial level are still being deliberated. The concepts of quality of life (QoL) and disaster resiliency are closely linked and their interrelationship is understood from the definitions and concepts developed in different studies. A disaster can have a negative impact on QoL and resiliency for disaster can protect and maintain QoL. This study develops an approach for integrating disaster resiliency into QoL based on new urbanization models, which can be re-orientated towards achieving resiliency. The Quality of Life with Disaster Resiliency (QoLDR) index offers the integration of resiliency issues arising from the urbanization process as well as natural hazards. It also provides directions for altering urbanization and increases adaptability, which results in resilient urbanization.