Yancheng of Jiangsu province, one of the three major cities involved in the province's coastal development plan, views the ecological system as its most important strategic resource and insists that economic development should not come at the cost of the environment and ecology, said Zhao Peng, Party Secretary of Yancheng.

China currently has 260 million patients with chronic diseases, and these illnesses have resulted in some 85 percent of the country's total deaths, figures from the Ministry of Health show.

According to a 2012-2015 blueprint on chronic disease prevention and control released by the ministry on Monday, as a result of fast urbanization and industrialization in an aging society, chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent and have taken up some 70 percent of China's total treatment costs.

Mumbai has emerged as the second-most liveable city in the world, according to an Ericsson ConsumerLab survey. The liveability factor has been tied to connectivity. Stockholm topped the list.

India's business capital has in the survey outranked cities such as New York, London and Los Angeles.

The 30-minute online survey (with 1,500 participants per city) was carried out in Cairo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Stockholm, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Seoul, London, Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong.

The School of Management Studies, CUSAT, has submitted the interim report on parking at Metro stations to Kochi Metro Rail Ltd.

The report suggests that the need of parking facility is more in the suburban areas and it decreases towards the inner parts of the city. The final report on the same will be submitted in 3 to 4 weeks' time.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday rejected the Parliamentary standing committee's suggestion to delete a clause in the Land Acquisition Bill allowing the government to acquire land for public-private-partnership (PPP) projects.

He said the government would not compromise with the fundamental principles in the Bill, whose thrust is on urbanisation and industrialisation. A similar assurance came from Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, who said his ministry would not allow any compromise on manufacturing and industrial activities as they were a national priority.

There's garbage in your greens. That fresh cucumber in your salad or your dose of green leafy veggies could well have been grown using raw sewage discharge.

As water scarcity mounts, farmers in the semi-urban areas are increasingly using sewage or waste water to grow veggies, cereals and fodder. The big concern is a large part of the sewage discharge from the urban centres is untreated, thereby triggering contamination risks on health and environmental issues.

KOLKATA, 16 MAY: The future of Indian cities ~ and Kolkata ~ lies in urban densification in the form of high-rise buildings and “virtual land”, said Mr Debashish Sen, principal secretary of West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) today. “Let the developers come,” said Mr Sen in a reference to Harvard economist Edward Glaeser's book Triumph of the City, in which Glaeser outlines some of the environmental benefits of concentrated urban populations.

Once a source of fresh water for irrigation, Kadaperi lake is now rapidly degrading

Due to unchecked pollution, abetted by government agencies, a sprawling water body in Tambaram is under siege. The Kadaperi Lake in West Tambaram, has fallen a victim to pollution caused by unchecked discharge of grey water and sullage from homes and commercial establishments, as well as effluents from the Tambaram Depot of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation.