Assessing urban sustainability and slum vulnerability in Indian cities through a dual-scale SDG-11 framework

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 requires urban-level evaluation frameworks, particularly for countries like India that face intra-urban disparities. While existing indices developed by NITI Aayog, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and the Ola Mobility Institute assess cities across various domains, including SDG performance, liveability, municipal efficiency, and mobility, they fall short of capturing city-level progress specific to SDG-11, which aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. This study constructs a dedicated SDG-11 index for India’s ten most populous cities to address this critical gap. Employing the Shannon Entropy method for objective weighting and the TOPSIS technique for ranking, this approach evaluates urban performance across four key pillars: safety, inclusivity, sustainability, and resilience. The results show that within our sample, Chennai received the highest score on safety, Hyderabad obtained the highest score in terms of inclusivity and resilience, while Surat led on the sustainability front. These specific findings are supported by a composite index, which positions Hyderabad and Mumbai as the top two performers, while Surat and Jaipur rank as the bottom two. To complement the macro assessment, a micro-level logistic regression model based on primary data from 611 slum households across six cities identifies structural determinants of economic vulnerability. Findings indicate that inadequate living conditions, poor ventilation, inadequate drainage, and insecure land tenure increase the likelihood of poverty among slum dwellers. This approach shows there exist significant inter-city disparities in macro-level SDG-11 outcomes while simultaneously flagging the determinants of inequities in access to housing and basic services, especially amongst the urban poor. The study contributes to the existing literature on by advancing the methodology for inclusive and resilient city governance by linking macro-level policy goals with micro-level urban realities.