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<ul class="summary-list"><li>New York City's air is abysmal this week because of smoke from Canadian wildfires. </li><li>Hazy skies are a shock to New York and other eastern locales but poor air is common in many cities.</li></ul>As a former New York City resident, I'm always curious about what's going on there. This week I didn't expect my texts to be about air quality. Coworkers, friends, and family members in various locales up and down the East Coast texted me about the terrible smoke blanketing their neighborhoods, with a cousin saying he'd had some trouble breathing. Another family member said Manhattan looked apocalyptic.For the past few days, New York City's air has appeared dirtier than the bottom of a subway track. The foul air from massive Canadian wildfires is expected to linger through at least Saturday. As shocked as New Yorkers — and people in other big cities from Detroit to Washington, DC — might be to barely be able to make out their skylines, this is nothing new for many people who live in other parts of the world. Lahore, Pakistan; Hotan, China; and Bhiwadi, India, had the worst air quality in the world in 2022, according to <a href="https://www.iqair.com/us/world-most-polluted-cities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data from IQ Air</a>. My colleague Spriha Srivastava wrote that New York's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-air-quality-awful-pollution-every-day-delhi-2023-6">suffocating smog reminds her of growing up in Delhi</a>. Indeed, New York City has found itself atop the rankings — and above all of the perennial offenders — for having the worst air quality and being hazardous to breathe. New York Mayor Eric Adams said that by Wednesday afternoon the <a href="https://abc7ny.com/air-quality-nyc-forecast-alert-canada-wildfire-smoke/13357814/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">air quality index hit 484</a>, out of a scale of 500. As of midday Thursday, it's around 180 — still not great.New Yorkers and others are getting a taste of what it can be like to live in Doha, Qatar, and Shanghai, where at least air pollution <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1283503/china-annual-pm25-particle-levels-shanghai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appears to be improving</a>.<div type="image" title="A hazy Manhattan skyline" height="2268" width="3023" msid="100858112" hostid="261"></div>In many developed economies, expectations about clean air are baked in. But that wasn't always the case, even in the US. Landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act, signed into law by President Nixon in 1970 and beefed up in 1990, acted like a giant air filter for the nation. Today, in many global cities where the air quality is poor, the focus is often on building economies to lift people out of poverty. "They're in a period of rapid economic growth," Robert Kremens, a physicist who studies wildfires, told Insider. "They sacrifice air quality over human health." He said those decisions are often understandable because the focus is on ensuring citizens aren't going hungry, for example. Yet there are consequences from the pollution as well. A study published last year found 86% of people living in the world's urban spaces encounter air pollution that's <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00350-8/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener">more than seven times</a> above guidelines put out by the World Health Organization back in 2005. Cleaner air is something the US now takes for granted — even out west where smoke from wildfires is far more common. Kremens, who is with the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology, said the US made a decision decades ago to make cleaner air a priority. That meant a big drop in pollution from industrial smokestacks and tailpipes. That was quite a change from the years before the federal government had the authority to regulate what America was sending into the sky. In 1948, for example, over the course of five days in Donora, Pennsylvania, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133758/#:~:text=The%20Clean%20Air%20Act%20of,from%20stationary%20and%20mobile%20sources." target="_blank" rel="noopener">20 people died</a> and thousands more were made sick by air pollution that spewed from a factory. It was incidents like this and seminal works like Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" on the effects of insecticides that propelled a nascent environmental movement.When the <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/earth-day.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first</a> Earth Day took place in April 1970, air pollution was a major problem in most US cities. In 1969, a river in Cleveland topped with industrial runoff caught fire, something that had happened at least a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dozen</a> times before. Almost one in 10 Americans took part in demonstrations or activities on the first Earth Day, and those participants sought something in particular: government action. Those actions have since made such a difference that many of us are now shocked by what poor air quality looks like."I'm going out to LA tomorrow. It's not red anymore. It used to be red when we went there," Kremens said this week from his office in Rochester, New York. "This is a societal decision, where we're going to clean up the air and the water." Kremens pointed to the Clean Air Act and the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-water-act" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Clean Water Act</a> as examples for what can be done when enough attention is paid to an environmental challenge. These advance are likely why the recent haze choking so many eastern cities has been so jarring, even for Kremens, who has gone around the world studying — and fighting — fires for more than 20 years. "I go outside and it smells like Montana," he said. "I have so many pictures on my wall that look like here now, but they're from Utah and Montana and places I've worked out west."I'm looking forward to another batch of photos from friends and family in eastern cities — pictures showing clear skies.

New Yorkers are getting a taste of what it's like to live in the pollution of Delhi, Doha, and Shanghai

FDI in construction-development projects fell by over 38 per cent during the year ending March 2015 to $ 758 million compared to $ 1,226 million in FY14. 
 
FDI flow has remained weak this year with just $34 million of investments in the April-June quarter of this fiscal. The poor pick-up in the inflow is owing to the slow approval process. 
 Despite the ‘<keyword id="6354423" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ease-of-Doing-Business">ease of doing business</keyword>’ initiative, even the CM of Maharashtra is struggling to break the mafia impasse that stonewalls the approval process and runs an extortion racket under his nose. Even the Environment Ministry approvals have not improved and remain contentious. In a way this is good as cities barely have any capacity to carry the weight of high-rise towers. Ideally, construction in cities with a population over 5 million should be banned until and unless the municipal corporation can provide proof of the capacity per capita in terms of ability of the city to handle traffic, sewerage, and provide water and power. 
 
These cut-off capacities should be published on their websites permanently and should be sacrosanct in implementation or else all—Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Mumbai—will follow Delhi in becoming dangerous cities (Already, 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India). 
 
Delhi is bathing in dust as construction debris and dust are contributing to 45 per cent of the pollution in the city. So while the CM of Delhi is at his wits’ end over the odd-even car scheme, the real culprit goes unchecked. A city administration must develop city infra projects to raise the capacities of services before giving a nod to growth. 
 
As metro projects progress in a dozen Indian cities, as roads projects accelerate to reach 30 km per day, and as real-estate construction gathers momentum to build even higher towers dotting the skyline, we need to set a framework so that the growth of a city is not at the cost of the life of its citizens. 
 
(The article is authored by Pratap Padode, Founder &amp; Director of Smart Cities Council India, an international consortium of smart cities expert practitioners, academicians and solution providers with over 7500 case studies across the world. Please visit www.India.SmartCitiesCouncil.com) 
 
(Image: Reuters)

Why construction should be banned in Delhi

New Delhi, Feb 7 () Capital markets regulator Sebi on Friday levied a fine of Rs 13.5 lakh on 13 promoters of GMM Pfaudler Ltd for failing to comply with takeover norms. Among other individuals, the promoters include Millars Machinery Company Pvt Ltd, Skyline Millars Ltd, Uttarak Enterprises Pvt Ltd and Pfaudler Inc. Sebi found that the promoters had failed to comply with Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeover (SAST) norms. It noted that the company was paying three quarterly dividends and a final dividend every year since 2003. Hence, under SAST norms, the promoters were required to file disclosures for each of the four record dates every year for the dividends declared, in addition to the disclosure for year ending March 31 every year. However, they failed to make disclosures, and on some instances made delayed disclosures. Accordingly, Sebi has levied a fine of Rs 13.5 lakh on the promoters, to be paid jointly and severally by them. "Correct and timely disclosures are also an essential part of the proper functioning of the securities market and failure to do so results in preventing investors from taking well-informed decision. Thus, the cornerstone of the Takeover regulations is investor protection," Sebi noted. In a separate order on Thursday, Sebi imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh on stock broker Sunness Capital India Pvt Ltd for violating Stock Brokers and Sub-Brokers Regulations as well as for not complying with Sebi's circular pertaining to running account settlement. Among others, the broker had failed to settle funds and securities of clients, did not display on its website all the documents executed by a client, client's position, margin and other related information. SRS RVK

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