Functional Adequacy and Urban Resilience: A Comparative Micro-Scale Analysis of Pandharpur and Barshi, Maharashtra

Abstract

Abstract The urban resilience is a city ability to survive, adapt, and recover from disaster and stresses while maintaining the essential function, transforming towards sustainability. This paper represents two mid-sized towns: Pandharpur and Barshi. Small and medium towns in Maharashtra face critical challenges in balancing functional adequacy of basic services with systemic urban resilience. It presents a comparative micro-scale analysis of two secondary towns in Solapur district Pandharpur and Barshi assessing their water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, and drainage systems against national benchmarks and multi-dimensional resilience frameworks. Using secondary datasets from municipal environmental status reports, Performance Improvement Plans, and district disaster management plans, the study constructs normalized indicators across five resilience dimensions: physical, social, economic, environmental, and institutional. Pandharpur faces periodic "stress bursts" due to massive religious congregations, while Barshi deals with steady regional growth. Through a comparative lens, the paper identifies that while Pandharpur possesses higher disaster-response readiness due to its pilgrimage status, Barshi exhibits better day-to-day functional stability. Recommendations include completing city-wide sewerage networks with sustained operation and maintenance funding, implementing tariff rationalization with income-based subsidies, institutionalizing Performance Improvement Planning as routine practice, establishing inter-departmental coordination mechanisms, and developing resilience-specific measures for pilgrimage stress management Pandharpur and slum integration Barshi.