The urban environment is a product of many tangible and intangible factors for communities, involving activities, spaces, and users of different age groups. Stakeholder consultation has become an essential part of envisaging any urban space. In general practice, mostly adults’ opinions and suggestions are taken into account, and children are sidelined, even if the issues are related to children. Children are an integral part of the present urbanizing world and are some of its most sensitive and affected users. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes three P’s: provision, protection, and participation. The third, participation, is a crucial dimension of creating a healthier environment, but it has largely been neglected. The drawing technique is among the methods to gather information directly through the children’s participatory approach. It has been observed that children prefer to express themselves by drawing rather than answering questions and find it easy and enjoyable. This research incorporates drawing as a methodological tool for identifying children’s expectations and understanding their preferences about their ideal neighborhood park. A total of 80 children aged between 6 and 15 years from planned zones of Lucknow city were selected for the research. The results derived from the content and co-relation data analysis techniques highlight that children emphasized physical, perceptional, cognitive, emotional, and social parameters for developing a child-friendly environment in parks and open spaces.

The creation of cities has been one of the most phenomenal achievements of human endeavor. Adults are the major stakeholders for such achievements but the children are helpless and representationless. The current research paper aims at understanding the issues faced by the children in the rapidly urbanized world where the lack of child-friendly environments/open spaces for their outdoor activities is cause for concern. The research paper looked at various national and international norms, standards, and practices of parks and open spaces to identify various child-friendly environmental parameters. The research adopted the Delphi method as a tool for the validation of child-friendly environment parameters. It also used children’s drawings and essays to understand children’s perceptions about the child-friendly environment. It is observed that present government norms and policies do not adhere to those parameters. The research found that Lucknow city does not meet the defined quantitative norms and standards as laid out by the national norms and standards for open spaces and parks. The quality dimensions for planning a child-friendly environment are weakly addressed by cities and neighborhoods. The city neighborhoods lack the physical, cognitive, perceptional, emotional, and social dimensions of a child-friendly environment. There is a need to adopt suitable norms and standards with measurable parameters as part of various dimensions and implement these in creating a child-friendly environment in planned neighborhoods.

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The river Ganga, particularly in the city of Kanpur, is facing severe pollution and degradation due to rapid urbanization, industrialization, and inadequate sanitation practices. The city's population growth and industrial activities have put tremendous pressure on the river, leading to the contamination of its water and degradation of its ecosystem. The pollution is primarily caused by the discharge of untreated municipal sewage and industrial effluents into the river. The lack of proper sanitation infrastructure and practices has further exacerbated the problem. The existing water bodies and natural habitats in Kanpur have been adversely affected, posing significant challenges to the sustainability of the city's environment and public health. The pollution levels in the Ganga River, especially in Kanpur, have reached alarming levels, leading to a decline in water quality and biodiversity. To address these issues and restore the purity and ecological balance of the Ganga River, the Indian government has launched the Namami Gange Programme. The program aims to effectively abate pollution, conserve, and rejuvenate the river through various initiatives, including the implementation of sewage treatment plants (STPs), ghat development, surface cleaning, afforestation, sanitation, and public awareness campaigns. This study focuses on assessing the impact of the sanitation schemes implemented under the Namami Gange mission in Kanpur city. It aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the projects in improving sanitation practices, reducing pollution levels, and contributing to the rejuvenation of the Ganga River. The assessment will provide insights into the progress made, identify challenges faced, and suggest potential measures to further enhance the impact of the sanitation initiatives in Kanpur.

One of the most common forms of physical activity is walking which is the mother of all the modes of transport which provides inexpensive and equal transportation options to improve residents’ health and quality of life. Due to several associated advantages such as wellbeing of residents and improving health, reducing air pollution, traffic congestion and decreasing energy consumption, walking has become an interesting topic for researchers. To have modern cities with highly efficient transportation facilities which support walking, cities and neighbourhoods are trying to promote a pedestrian-friendly environment. As a result, walkability is a sustainable concept to improve the liveability of growing cities that describes the level of capability of the built environments to support walking for multiple purposes including transport, leisure and exercise purposes. Although measurement of walkability includes several methods and approaches, this research has emphasized on the walkability index as well as neighbourhoods features that influence the willingness of people to walk. Since Lucknow is not considered a walkable city, it is valuable to investigate how this city has tackled this issue. Therefore, for better interpretation, one such neighbourhood in Lucknow was selected to examine the level of walkability and the factors affect that