A research report presented at the 13th Urban Age conference, held at the London School of Economics, has both good and bad news in store for Delhi.

Research in eight urban cities across the world has found that Delhi has a very low violent crime rate compared to New York and Istanbul.

The bad news is that the city has a high average density of built up area — despite its relatively low-rise urban landscape — making it difficult to control average particulate matter 10 pollution levels.

Comparing Delhi’s urban dynamics to seven urban cities — London, Bogota, Lagos, Tokyo, New York, Istanbul and Berlin — the study highlights that the capital has an extremely high average density of built up area of 19,698 people per square km. This is nearly twice that of the New York Metro area (which at 11,531 people/sq km includes high rise Manhattan) and Tokyo with 11,025 people/sq km.

“The result of this high density is that Delhi only has two square mts of green space per person, significantly lower than London (36 sq mts) and Berlin (39 sq mts). This increases the challenge of tackling Delhi’s average PM 10 levels, which are significantly higher than other urban cities,” the study states.

The report also says Delhi scores well in having a very low level of violent crime, measured by the murder rate (homicides per 100,000 people), than New York and Istanbul.

The research has been carried out in preparation of a two-day conference on Urban Age, “Governing Urban Futures”, organised in partnership with the National Institute of Urban Affairs which started on Friday.

The conference is being organised by ‘LSE Cities’ at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society.

Over 60 experts and policymakers from 22 cities across 10 countries gathered at the conference to explore the links between urban governance and future development.

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