Understanding the relationship between resource consumption and development levels

Developing an empirical understanding of the relationship between built environment material stocks and minimum standards of living is essential to understanding challenges and opportunities for sustainable development. This is particularly important in the Global South given the existing deficits in living standards and the unprecedented rates of urbanization expected in the coming decades. The following body of work seeks to provide an improved understanding of this relationship through an empirical analysis of India which is used as a topical testbed to address this research aim. Multiscale observations reveal widespread challenges to minimum standards of living and resource consumption and thus the achievement of interconnected SDGs. The empirical quantification of the coupling of MS and basic needs outcomes across scales reveals existing national trends, where minimum standards of living have grown with the provision of carbon intensive materials within the built environment. The results also reveal that significant deficits in overall basic needs still exist and that a substantial amount of residential building MS are required to fill deficits for minimal improvements to overall basic needs if current trends are to continue. Through a city- and sub-city scale assessment of built environment MS accumulation within India for the first time, improved insight into the provision of MS in the context of high basic needs outcomes is developed. This is of crucial importance for future policy making given that the observed national trends are likely a result of policy choices in how urban infrastructure and housing are provided within India. The results therefore point to the need to integrate MS thinking and SDG monitoring within future urban planning and to develop empirical understandings of this relationship in other nations of the Global South such that nations identify appropriate strategies to decouple from global trends.