By Kavita Dehalwar
Introduction
The contemporary city is experiencing a profound transformation. Urban development is no longer defined only by the construction of buildings, roads, bridges, and infrastructure. Increasingly, attention is being directed towards the quality of everyday urban life: how easily people can reach essential destinations, whether neighbourhoods provide accessible public spaces, how buildings interact with their surroundings, how materials are consumed, and how emerging technologies can support more sustainable urban systems.
For much of the twentieth century, urban development was strongly influenced by functional separation. Housing, employment, commerce, recreation, and transportation were frequently planned as distinct components. The expansion of automobile-oriented development further increased spatial separation between everyday activities. While this model enabled large-scale urban expansion, it also contributed to longer travel distances, dependence on motorised transport, fragmented public spaces, increased infrastructure costs, and unequal access to urban opportunities.
An alternative approach is to reconsider the city from the perspective of everyday life. Instead of beginning with infrastructure, land parcels, or development intensity, planning can begin with people and their daily activities. Where do people live? Where do they work and study? How do they reach parks and public facilities? What makes a route convenient or uncomfortable? How do buildings contribute to neighbourhood quality? How can technology support, rather than replace, human experience?
Recent research provides several useful foundations for this perspective. Dehalwar and Sharma (2024) highlight the complementary nature of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Lalramsangi et al. (2025) investigate route choices for accessing public open spaces in hill cities. Sharma et al. (2024) examine the life-cycle implications of recycled and secondary materials in road construction. Kumar et al. (2025) demonstrate the use of CA–ANN and spatial analysis to understand urban growth. Sharma et al. (2025) examine green buildings in relation to sustainable neighbourhoods, while Sharma (2026) explores generative AI and digital twins for sustainable last-mile logistics.
Taken together, these studies can inform a broader discussion about the human-centred city—a city in which accessibility, proximity, public space, environmental responsibility, technological innovation, and social experience are considered together.
1. From the City of Infrastructure to the City of Everyday Life
Cities are often represented through infrastructure. Maps show roads, buildings, transit lines, land-use zones, drainage systems, and utility networks. These representations are essential for planning, but they do not fully capture how cities are experienced.
For residents, the city is encountered through everyday activities: walking to a bus stop, taking children to school, visiting a market, meeting friends in a public space, travelling to work, accessing healthcare, buying groceries, or simply sitting outdoors.
This distinction between the physical city and the experienced city is fundamental.
Two neighbourhoods with similar infrastructure may produce very different experiences. One may have shaded streets, active public spaces, short walking routes, accessible services, and good connectivity. Another may have technically adequate infrastructure but long distances, poor pedestrian conditions, disconnected streets, and limited public life.
Consequently, the quality of urban development cannot be measured solely through the amount of infrastructure provided. The more important question is how infrastructure enables people to use and experience the city.
This perspective suggests a shift from infrastructure provision to urban usability.
A road is not simply a transportation facility; it can also be a pedestrian barrier, a public-space edge, a commercial environment, or a source of noise and air pollution. A park is not simply an area of vegetation; it is also a social space whose value depends on accessibility, safety, comfort, and usability.
Similarly, a building should not be considered independently from its street, neighbourhood, transportation system, and environmental context.
The human-centred city therefore requires planners to examine relationships between individual components rather than treating them as isolated objects.
2. Proximity as a Principle of Urban Planning
One of the most important principles of a human-centred city is proximity.
When essential destinations are located close to residential areas, people can make more journeys by walking or cycling. Shorter distances can also reduce dependence on private vehicles, decrease travel costs, and make daily activities more manageable for people who cannot drive.
Proximity is particularly important for children, older adults, people with disabilities, low-income households, and others who may have limited access to private vehicles.
However, proximity should not be understood simply as straight-line distance. Actual accessibility depends on the structure of the street network, topography, crossings, barriers, safety, and the quality of pedestrian routes.
Lalramsangi et al. (2025) demonstrate the importance of this distinction in their research on route choices for accessing public open spaces in hill cities. In environments with significant topographical variation, the physical distance between two locations does not necessarily represent the difficulty of travelling between them.
A public park may appear geographically close to a neighbourhood while requiring a long or difficult walking route because of steep terrain, disconnected streets, stairs, or other barriers.
Therefore, planning for proximity requires an understanding of effective distance rather than simply geographical distance.
3. Public Open Spaces as Everyday Urban Destinations
Public open spaces are among the most important components of a human-centred city.
They provide opportunities for recreation, relaxation, physical activity, social interaction, community events, children’s play, and contact with nature. They can also contribute to environmental functions such as shade, stormwater management, biodiversity, and urban cooling.
However, the existence of public open space does not guarantee its social value.
A park located far from residential areas may have limited everyday use. A centrally located park may still be underused if access is difficult, safety is poor, or the space does not respond to local needs.
The work of Lalramsangi et al. (2025) is relevant because it places attention on route choice and accessibility. Understanding how people reach public spaces provides insight into whether these spaces are genuinely integrated into urban life.
This suggests that public-space planning should consider at least four dimensions:
3.1 Availability
Is there a public open space within a reasonable travel distance?
3.2 Accessibility
Can people reach it through safe and convenient routes?
3.3 Usability
Does the space provide facilities and environmental conditions appropriate for different users?
3.4 Connectivity
Is the space connected to other parks, streets, neighbourhoods, and public facilities?
A city can therefore move from a simple target of providing a certain amount of open space towards a more meaningful objective: creating an accessible network of public spaces.
4. Streets as Public Spaces
The traditional distinction between transportation infrastructure and public space is increasingly being questioned.
Streets occupy a large proportion of urban land and influence the daily experience of residents. They accommodate vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, vendors, trees, street furniture, drainage, utilities, and social activity.
In many cities, however, street design has prioritised vehicle movement over other functions.
A human-centred approach would reconsider the street as a multifunctional space.
A successful street can:
- move people efficiently;
- provide comfortable walking routes;
- accommodate cycling;
- support local commerce;
- provide shade;
- manage stormwater;
- create social interaction;
- improve visual quality; and
- connect public spaces.
This is especially important in dense neighbourhoods where creating new public land may be difficult.
Instead of viewing streets exclusively as transport corridors, planners can consider them part of the broader public-space network.
This perspective is consistent with the findings of Lalramsangi et al. (2025), because the quality and configuration of movement routes influence access to public destinations.
5. Designing for Different Users
The human-centred city cannot be designed around an abstract “average user.”
People differ in age, physical ability, income, travel behaviour, occupation, gender, family structure, and access to technology. These differences influence how they use urban environments.
For example, a steep pedestrian route may be acceptable to some users but difficult for people with mobility limitations. A long distance may be manageable for a young adult but challenging for an older person. A digitally managed transport system may be convenient for some users but inaccessible to people with limited digital literacy.
Urban design should therefore incorporate principles of universal accessibility.
This involves:
- step-free routes where feasible;
- appropriate gradients;
- tactile surfaces;
- accessible crossings;
- adequate seating;
- shade;
- lighting;
- clear signage;
- accessible public transportation;
- safe pedestrian intersections; and
- appropriately designed public toilets and facilities.
The objective is not to design separate cities for different groups. Rather, it is to design common urban environments that can accommodate diverse needs.
6. The Neighbourhood as the Basic Unit of Everyday Urbanism
The neighbourhood is an important scale for human-centred planning.
The metropolitan scale is useful for understanding regional transportation, economic development, and large infrastructure. The building scale is necessary for architectural and environmental performance. However, many everyday activities occur at the neighbourhood level.
People interact with:
- local streets;
- schools;
- parks;
- shops;
- clinics;
- community facilities;
- transit stops;
- religious and cultural spaces;
- workplaces; and
- neighbours.
Sharma et al. (2025), in examining the role of green buildings in creating sustainable neighbourhoods, provide a useful foundation for considering this intermediate scale.
A neighbourhood should not be viewed merely as a collection of buildings. It is an integrated environmental and social system.
A sustainable neighbourhood can combine:
- energy-efficient buildings;
- accessible public spaces;
- pedestrian-friendly streets;
- public transportation;
- water-sensitive infrastructure;
- green infrastructure;
- waste management;
- local services; and
- community facilities.
This approach creates opportunities for coordinated interventions.
For example, a street improvement programme can simultaneously incorporate pedestrian infrastructure, trees, stormwater management, seating, lighting, and cycle facilities. Such multifunctionality can increase the value generated from limited urban land.
7. Green Buildings and the Neighbourhood Context
Green buildings are frequently evaluated through energy efficiency, water conservation, material selection, indoor environmental quality, and renewable energy.
These characteristics remain important, but their contribution to urban sustainability depends partly on the neighbourhood in which the building is located.
A highly efficient building surrounded by inaccessible roads, limited public transportation, and few services may still generate substantial transportation demand.
Sharma et al. (2025) emphasise the relationship between green buildings and sustainable neighbourhoods. This relationship suggests that building sustainability should be integrated with spatial planning.
For example, building orientation can influence pedestrian comfort and public-space quality. Ground-floor uses can influence street activity. Green roofs can contribute to ecological networks. Water-sensitive building systems can complement neighbourhood drainage. Renewable energy systems can contribute to local energy resilience.
This creates a multi-scalar approach:
Building → Street → Neighbourhood → City
Sustainability interventions should ideally be evaluated across all four levels.
8. Circularity and the Material City
The human-centred city must also consider the materials from which it is constructed.
Urban residents may rarely think about the origin of road aggregates, concrete, asphalt, steel, bricks, or other construction materials. Nevertheless, these materials have environmental and economic consequences.
Sharma et al. (2024) examine recycled and secondary materials for road construction using Life Cycle Assessment. Their work demonstrates why infrastructure should be evaluated across its life cycle rather than solely through initial construction cost.
A circular city attempts to reduce the linear consumption of resources.
Instead of:
extract → manufacture → construct → discard,
the circular model seeks:
extract less → reuse → recycle → maintain → recover → reuse again.
This approach is particularly important for roads and other infrastructure because they contain substantial quantities of materials.
Construction and demolition waste can potentially become a resource for new infrastructure, provided that technical quality and environmental safety are appropriately assessed.
Life-cycle thinking can also influence design. Infrastructure can be designed to facilitate maintenance, repair, replacement, disassembly, and future material recovery.
This represents a fundamental change in the concept of infrastructure.
Infrastructure should not be considered a permanent object. It should be considered part of a long-term material cycle.
9. Urban Growth and the Loss of Proximity
One of the major threats to the human-centred city is uncontrolled spatial expansion.
When cities grow outward without coordinated planning, residential areas may become separated from employment, services, schools, and recreational spaces. This increases travel requirements and makes public transportation more difficult to provide efficiently.
Kumar et al. (2025) demonstrate the usefulness of CA–ANN modelling and spatial analysis for understanding urban growth in Indore. Predictive urban-growth modelling can help planners understand where expansion is likely to occur and examine the implications for infrastructure and land-use planning.
From a human-centred perspective, urban-growth modelling should not only ask:
Where will the city expand?
It should also ask:
What will this expansion mean for everyday accessibility?
A new development area may contain thousands of housing units, but if schools, healthcare, public transportation, workplaces, and public spaces are distant, residents may become highly dependent on motorised transportation.
Therefore, spatial-growth models can be combined with accessibility analysis to assess whether future urban expansion supports or undermines proximity.
This creates an important connection between macro-scale urban modelling and micro-scale everyday life.
10. The Relationship Between Land Use and Mobility
Land use and transportation are deeply interconnected.
When housing, employment, education, shopping, recreation, and services are spatially separated, people travel longer distances. Conversely, mixed-use and well-connected neighbourhoods can reduce the distance between everyday destinations.
However, mixed-use development alone does not guarantee accessibility. Street connectivity, pedestrian infrastructure, public transportation, and the quality of public spaces also matter.
A human-centred planning framework should therefore evaluate land-use patterns according to their mobility implications.
For example, a neighbourhood could be assessed through:
- average distance to schools;
- distance to healthcare facilities;
- access to public transport;
- access to parks;
- pedestrian-network connectivity;
- cycling accessibility;
- travel-time distribution; and
- availability of local employment.
Such indicators can transform the idea of “mixed-use development” from a land-use category into an assessment of actual everyday accessibility.
11. Last-Mile Connectivity and Everyday Urban Experience
The last kilometre of a journey often determines whether a transportation system is genuinely usable.
A person may live close to a railway station or bus terminal, but if the final connection requires an uncomfortable or unsafe walk, the theoretical accessibility of the transit system may not translate into actual use.
This is particularly important in dense urban areas and in cities with complex topography.
Lalramsangi et al. (2025) demonstrate the importance of understanding route choices and spatial configuration. Their work can be connected to a broader understanding of last-mile accessibility.
A complete mobility chain can be represented as:
Home → pedestrian route → local transport → main transit system → pedestrian route → destination
Weakness at any stage can reduce the usability of the entire system.
Therefore, transportation planning should not end at the transit station. The surrounding pedestrian environment is equally important.
12. Digital Technologies and the Human Experience
Technology is becoming increasingly important in managing urban systems. However, technology should ultimately serve human needs.
Sharma (2026) examines the potential of generative AI and digital twins for sustainable last-mile logistics. These technologies can support route optimisation, scenario analysis, electric-vehicle integration, and more efficient logistics operations.
The same technologies could potentially contribute to everyday urban management.
For example, digital twins could be used to examine:
- pedestrian flows;
- public-space utilisation;
- transportation demand;
- delivery movements;
- building energy use;
- infrastructure conditions; and
- environmental conditions.
Generative AI could assist planners in developing and comparing scenarios.
However, the purpose should not be technological complexity for its own sake.
A digital system is valuable when it helps answer a meaningful question or improve a public outcome.
For example:
- Can residents reach a park more easily?
- Can deliveries be completed with fewer emissions?
- Can public transport become more accessible?
- Can infrastructure materials be reused?
- Can future development reduce travel distances?
These questions maintain the focus on people.
13. The Risk of a Technology-Centred City
There is a danger that the concept of the smart city can become overly technology-centred.
A city may install sensors, cameras, digital platforms, and artificial-intelligence systems while still having poor sidewalks, inaccessible public spaces, inadequate maintenance, and unequal access to services.
Technology cannot compensate automatically for poor planning.
Sharma (2026) identifies issues such as cost, data privacy, and equity in relation to digital technologies for logistics. These concerns are relevant to broader urban applications as well.
A human-centred digital strategy should therefore satisfy three conditions:
First, technological relevance
The technology should address a clearly defined urban problem.
Second, institutional capacity
Authorities should have the skills and organisational systems necessary to operate and maintain it.
Third, social accessibility
The technology should not create new barriers for people who lack digital access or skills.
Technology should therefore be treated as an enabler of better planning, not as a substitute for planning.
14. The Importance of Research Methods
Human-centred planning requires evidence about both physical conditions and human experience.
Dehalwar and Sharma (2024) provide an important methodological perspective by examining distinctions between quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Quantitative methods can measure:
- travel time;
- accessibility;
- land-use change;
- building energy use;
- material impacts;
- pedestrian flows;
- urban-growth patterns; and
- transportation demand.
Qualitative approaches can explore:
- user perceptions;
- behavioural motivations;
- cultural meanings;
- social barriers;
- institutional processes;
- stakeholder expectations; and
- lived experiences.
A comprehensive neighbourhood study may therefore combine both.
For example, researchers could use GIS to calculate walking accessibility to public spaces and then conduct interviews to understand why some residents do not use those spaces.
The quantitative analysis identifies what is happening, while qualitative research can help explain why it is happening.
This methodological combination is especially important when planning for vulnerable groups whose experiences may not be visible in aggregate datasets.
15. Measuring the Human-Centred City
If cities are to become more human-centred, planning institutions need appropriate indicators.
Traditional urban indicators often focus on:
- road length;
- floor-space development;
- infrastructure expenditure;
- number of buildings;
- vehicle capacity; or
- total developed area.
These remain relevant, but additional indicators can capture everyday urban experience.
Accessibility indicators
- percentage of residents within walking distance of public transport;
- percentage within walking distance of public open spaces;
- average walking time to essential services.
Public-space indicators
- public-space area per resident;
- proportion of residents with convenient access;
- pedestrian connectivity;
- quality and usability.
Neighbourhood indicators
- local service accessibility;
- mixed-use intensity;
- pedestrian connectivity;
- green coverage;
- building environmental performance.
Resource indicators
- proportion of recycled construction materials;
- construction waste recovery;
- life-cycle emissions;
- material reuse.
Digital indicators
- availability of urban data;
- digital-service accessibility;
- system transparency;
- data-protection performance.
The purpose of such indicators is not simply to create another ranking system. Their purpose is to help planners understand whether urban interventions are improving everyday conditions.
16. Towards a New Planning Model
The research discussed in this article suggests a new model of planning based on six principles.
16.1 Proximity
Essential destinations should be located within reasonable reach of residents.
16.2 Connectivity
Neighbourhoods should provide connected networks for walking, cycling, public transport, and other forms of mobility.
16.3 Inclusivity
Urban environments should respond to diverse physical, social, economic, and demographic needs.
16.4 Circularity
Buildings and infrastructure should be designed around efficient resource use, maintenance, reuse, and recovery.
16.5 Intelligence
Spatial analysis, AI, digital twins, and other technologies should support evidence-based decisions.
16.6 Participation
Residents and communities should contribute knowledge and perspectives to planning processes.
These principles are mutually reinforcing.
For example, a connected pedestrian network improves accessibility, reduces dependence on motorised travel, strengthens public-space use, and can contribute to neighbourhood vitality. Green buildings reduce resource consumption while contributing to neighbourhood environmental quality. Circular construction reduces material pressure while supporting long-term infrastructure sustainability.
17. A Human-Centred Planning Cycle
A practical planning process can be organised into eight stages.
Stage 1: Understand the neighbourhood
Map land use, infrastructure, population, public spaces, mobility, environmental conditions, and social characteristics.
Stage 2: Measure accessibility
Analyse actual travel routes, not only straight-line distances. The route-choice perspective highlighted by Lalramsangi et al. (2025) is particularly relevant.
Stage 3: Understand growth
Use spatial analysis and predictive approaches such as CA–ANN to understand potential future development (Kumar et al., 2025).
Stage 4: Evaluate environmental performance
Apply LCA and other environmental assessment tools to infrastructure and material choices (Sharma et al., 2024).
Stage 5: Improve buildings and neighbourhoods
Integrate green-building strategies with neighbourhood-scale planning (Sharma et al., 2025).
Stage 6: Explore digital scenarios
Use AI and digital twins to evaluate mobility, logistics, infrastructure, and operational alternatives (Sharma, 2026).
Stage 7: Engage communities
Use interviews, surveys, workshops, and participatory methods alongside quantitative analysis (Dehalwar & Sharma, 2024).
Stage 8: Monitor outcomes
Measure whether interventions actually improve accessibility, environmental quality, resource efficiency, and everyday experience.
This cycle turns planning into a process of continuous learning.
18. Implications for Indian Urban Development
The human-centred approach is especially relevant to Indian cities because of their diversity of urban forms.
Indian cities contain historic cores, planned colonies, informal settlements, peri-urban villages, new residential developments, industrial areas, institutional campuses, and rapidly transforming corridors.
A uniform model is therefore unlikely to work everywhere.
In older urban areas, improving pedestrian connectivity and public spaces may be more important than constructing new roads. In rapidly expanding peripheral areas, managing urban growth and ensuring proximity to services may be the priority. In hill cities, topography-sensitive accessibility may require greater attention. In rapidly developing Tier-2 cities, predictive urban-growth modelling may help coordinate infrastructure investment.
The research represented by Kumar et al. (2025), Lalramsangi et al. (2025), Sharma et al. (2024), Sharma et al. (2025), Sharma (2026), and Dehalwar and Sharma (2024) collectively illustrates the importance of context-sensitive approaches.
Indian urban planning can benefit from integrating these methods rather than applying them independently.
19. Future Research Agenda
Future research on human-centred urbanism can expand in several directions.
First, accessibility studies should integrate physical, social, and perceived accessibility. Distance alone cannot capture the full experience of urban movement.
Second, urban-growth models should be connected with accessibility indicators. Predicting where development will occur is useful, but understanding whether future development will provide adequate access to services is equally important.
Third, LCA can be extended beyond roads to neighbourhood infrastructure, buildings, pavements, public spaces, and urban utilities.
Fourth, green-building research should increasingly examine relationships between building performance and public-space quality.
Fifth, digital twins can be explored as platforms for integrating transportation, land use, logistics, energy, and environmental information.
Sixth, AI-based planning systems should be evaluated not only for accuracy but also for transparency, fairness, privacy, and practical usefulness.
Finally, mixed-method research should become more common. Quantitative modelling can provide systematic evidence, while qualitative research can ensure that planning remains connected to people’s lived experiences.
Conclusion
The idea of the human-centred city offers an alternative way of understanding urban development. Instead of treating infrastructure, buildings, mobility, public spaces, materials, and digital technologies as separate sectors, it considers them components of everyday urban life.
The research discussed in this article provides valuable building blocks for this perspective. Dehalwar and Sharma (2024) demonstrate the importance of selecting appropriate quantitative and qualitative research methods. Lalramsangi et al. (2025) show how route choices and spatial configuration influence access to public open spaces. Kumar et al. (2025) demonstrate how CA–ANN and spatial analysis can contribute to understanding urban growth. Sharma et al. (2024) highlight the relevance of life-cycle thinking and recycled materials in road construction. Sharma et al. (2025) connect green buildings with sustainable neighbourhood development. Sharma (2026) demonstrates the emerging potential of generative AI and digital twins for sustainable logistics.
These contributions can be interpreted through a common principle: urban sustainability should ultimately be evaluated through its consequences for people, places, resources, and everyday life.
A human-centred city is not necessarily a city with fewer technologies or less infrastructure. Rather, it is a city where infrastructure and technology are directed towards meaningful human outcomes. It is a city where residents can reach essential services conveniently, access public spaces safely, move through streets comfortably, live in environmentally responsive buildings, and benefit from infrastructure designed with long-term resource efficiency in mind.
The human-centred city is also not a rejection of data-driven planning. On the contrary, it requires better data. But data must be interpreted carefully and combined with local knowledge. A model can identify patterns; communities can explain experiences. A digital twin can simulate scenarios; planners must decide which scenarios are socially and environmentally appropriate. LCA can quantify environmental consequences; policymakers must incorporate these findings into investment decisions.
The future of urban planning therefore lies in integration rather than substitution.
Artificial intelligence should complement professional judgement. Quantitative analysis should complement qualitative understanding. Digital models should complement field observation. Green buildings should complement sustainable neighbourhoods. Public spaces should complement mobility networks. Circular construction should complement long-term infrastructure planning.
Ultimately, the most meaningful measure of an urban system is not how sophisticated its technology appears or how much infrastructure it contains, but whether people can live, move, interact, work, and participate in urban life with reasonable accessibility, safety, comfort, dignity, and environmental quality.
The city of the future should consequently be understood not merely as a smart city, a green city, or a compact city, but as a human-centred and continuously learning city—one that uses spatial knowledge, environmental assessment, emerging technologies, and community experience to improve the everyday conditions of urban life.
References
Dehalwar, K., & Sharma, S. N. (2024). Exploring the distinctions between quantitative and qualitative research methods. Think India Journal, 27(1), 7–15.
Kumar, G., Vyas, S., Sharma, S. N., & Dehalwar, K. (2025). Urban growth prediction using CA-ANN model and spatial analysis for planning policy in Indore city, India. GeoJournal, 90(3), 139.
Lalramsangi, V., Garg, Y. K., & Sharma, S. N. (2025). Route choices to access public open spaces in hill cities. Environment and Urbanization ASIA, 16(2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/09754253251388721
Sharma, S. N., Dehalwar, K., Lodhi, A. S., & Jaiswal, A. (2024). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of recycled & secondary materials in the construction of roads. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 1326(1), 012102.
Sharma, S. N., Singh, S., Kumar, G., Pandey, A. K., & Dehalwar, K. (2025). Role of green buildings in creating sustainable neighbourhoods. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 1519(1), 012018.
Sharma, S. N. (2026). Generative AI and digital twins for sustainable last-mile logistics: Enabling green operations and electric vehicle integration. In A. Awad & D. Al Ahmari (Eds.), Accelerating logistics through generative AI, digital twins, and autonomous operations. IGI Global.
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