From Poles to Plans: Why Cities Must Integrate Electricity and Urban Design

Look up in any Indian city and you’ll see the story of urban dysfunction written in a tangle of wires. The chaos isn’t just visual, it’s institutional.

For decades, urban planning and electricity distribution have operated in parallel universes. One decides where we live, move and work. The other decides how we power it. The result: messy streets, unsafe networks, and billions lost to inefficiencies.

The proposed amendment act, i.e., Electricity Act 2025, offers an opportunity to bridge this divide. It could become the first energy law to recognise that electricity is not just a utility, but the lifeblood of the city.

The Sustainable Urban Networks for Dynamic and Resilient (SUNDAR) India report, prepared by the Research Triangle Institute and the National Institute of Urban Affairs, offers a compelling blueprint.

Power in the City: A Broken Connection

India’s cities are among the world’s fastest-growing. Yet, their electricity networks often resemble those of an earlier century.

According to SUNDAR, this is no accident. It’s the outcome of “fractured mandates, limited coordination and siloed planning” among utilities, often a product of licenced monopoly business, municipalities and regulators.

The result is predictable: high losses (averaging nearly 20%), frequent outages (SAIDI, SAIFI exceeding 100), an unsafe system (electrocution killed nearly 13,000 people in 2022), and a constant cycle of patchwork repairs.

These are not technical problems, but governance failures.

The report urges cities to view electricity networks not as afterthoughts, but as integral infrastructure, co-planned with transport corridors, drainage, telecom ducts and public spaces. Cities that adopt integrated planning, improve reliability, accelerate energy transition and reclaim streets for people.

Powering Climate-Resilient CitiesAn integrated urban electricity system isn’t just about efficiency or aesthetics. It is central to climate action. India’s cities already consume over 70% of the nation’s electricity, and that will increase as millions migrate in the coming decades.

As cities electrify transport, heating, cooling, and public infrastructure, every kilowatt-hour will increasingly be scrutinized for its carbon impact. Smart networks, such as underground cables, smart meters, and digital twins, accelerate renewable integration, provide a fillip to energy conservation, scale up EV charging, and reduce losses.

Co-planning electricity with urban infrastructure also builds climate resilience: insulated underground cables withstand cyclones, heatwaves, and high-intensity rain that threaten overhead networks.

Time to Go Underground — Literally and Strategically

Globally, cities have moved their power networks below the surface, not just for aesthetics but for performance. Underground distribution networks are safer, reliable, and resilient.

Yes, they cost more upfront. SUNDAR pegs the installation cost at a few multiples of overhead systems. But the returns more than justify these investments. Lower technical losses, fewer outages, less maintenance and virtually zero theft and accidents.

The Bengaluru example is instructive. As the utility moved 7,000 km of cables underground, distribution losses decreased from 12.3% in 2019-20 to 8.4% in 2024-25. Customer complaints declined sharply, and pedestrian spaces expanded. Likewise, in Puri, completed sections have improved storm resistance, reduced outages, and strengthened infrastructure near the Jagannath Temple—advancing Odisha’s broader agenda of resilient, smart urban power systems.

The equation is simple: what costs more to build costs far less to live with. Underground networks are not indulgence; they are insurance: against blackouts, against accidents, against climate risks.

Delhi seems to have taken note. Earlier this year, the Chief Minister announced an ambition to make the city free of overhead wires.

Smaller Discoms, Bigger Accountability

The second big idea India must embrace is institutional. Electricity distribution in most states is dominated by large, unwieldy utilities serving vast territories. The consumer, often, is a distant and forgotten figure. Smaller, local distribution companies, i.e., city-or district-level discoms, are essential for the mindset shift.

A localised discom knows its terrain by each inch, its consumers more intimately, and its network as a line on its palm. It can act faster on outages, theft, or safety hazards. It can fix faults faster. It can coordinate directly with the municipal corporation on trenching, EV-charging and grid-interactive buildings.

More importantly, smaller discoms will enhance trust. Consumers can see who is responsible and connect directly. Regulatory oversight, too, becomes sharper when performance metrics such as losses, outages, and complaint resolution are measured locally.

This means that the Electricity Act 2025 should explicitly encourage smaller, performance-oriented distribution companies, with strong incentives for reliability, safety and loss reduction. Discoms should work closely with city governments, effectively creating “urban energy service entities” aligned with local development plans.

From Silos to Systems

The Electricity Act 2025 must institutionalise joint planning; three policy steps can make the difference:

1. Mandate Integrated Urban Power Plans: Every city should prepare a five-year Urban Electricity Infrastructure Plan jointly with the discom, municipality and other infrastructure providers. This plan should digitize assets, project future demand at the local level, integrate climate risks and phased investment targets, including undergrounding. An apex coordination body at state level should be constituted specifically for infrastructure planning and management. It should review and align plans, ensure consistency, prioritize funding, and inter-agency accountability.

2. Create an Urban Distribution Fund: A dedicated financing window with commitments from central schemes and green infrastructure funds can finance the upfront cost. Over a 10-15-year horizon, loss reduction, safety and public-space value will yield the payback.

3. Reward Reliability, Not Volume: Regulatory commissions must move towards outcome-based metrics i.e., outage reduction, improved safety, climate action and faster customer service.

The Light Ahead

India’s power sector reforms have long focused on generation and tariffs. But the next frontier is strengthening the distribution system through closer coordination with city administrations, increased investments, and deeper connections with customers.

The proposed Electricity Act 2025 can mark this shift. By embedding coordination between utilities and urban authorities, it can align electricity planning with city development, integrate power infrastructure into urban design, and empower local distribution companies to deliver safer, more reliable and consumer-centric services.

Smart greenfield cities such as Amravati offer opportunities to demonstrate how integrated planning from the outset can create resilient, digitally managed, and low-carbon urban power systems. Some of these are evidenced by the GITY city in Gujarat.

Cities that plan their power networks with their streets will not just look better; they will be economically productive, safe for citizens and climate resilient.

Getting our wires underground and our planning above board will make India’s cities not just efficient and safe, but truly SUNDAR i.e., sustainable, dynamic, and resilient.