What Makes Indian Cities Smart? A Policy Analysis of Smart Cities Mission

Prasad, Deepti; Alizadeh, Tooran

doi:10.1016/j.tele.2020.101466

Cited by 66 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The smart city is known as an adaptive urban planning approach to cope with disturbances [36][37][38]. While there is no consensus regarding the definition, principles, objectives, and different aspects of a smart city [39][40][41][42][43], the smartness of cities includes three main elements: people, institutions, and technology [15,44]. During crises, smart city initiatives enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play critical roles in responding and recovering efficiently and improving learning by doing [45,46].…”

Section: Smart City As a Planning Tool During Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart City and Crisis Management: Lessons for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hassankhani

Alidadi

Sharifi

et al. 2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

COVID-19 shocked cities around the world and revealed the vulnerability of urban lives and functions. Most cities experienced a catastrophic disturbance that has lasted for a long time. Planning plays a critical role in responding efficiently to this crisis and enabling rapid functional recovery in the post-disaster era. Cities that have implemented digitalization initiatives and programs are likely to have more capacity to react appropriately. Specifically, digitalized cities could ensure the well-being of their residents and maintain continuity of urban functions. This research aims to analyze the role of technology in crisis management in the last two decades and provide appropriate policy recommendations for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Systematic literature review and subjective content analysis are employed to investigate the effects of technology on community well-being and making cities more resilient in past crises. This study shows that different technology-driven policies and actions enable crisis management, enhance community well-being, and increase urban resilience. Technology has enhanced coping and recovery capacities by increasing participation and social connectedness, enhancing physical and mental health and maintaining the functionality of education and economic systems. These have been achieved through various solutions and technologies such as social media, telehealth, tracking and monitoring systems, sensors and locational applications, teleworking systems, etc. These solutions and technologies have also been used during the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance community well-being and sustain urban functions. However, technology deployment might have adverse effects such as social exclusion, digital divide, privacy and confidentiality violation, political bias and misinformation dissemination, and inefficient remote working and education. It is suggested that to mitigate these side effects, policymakers should liberate the process of digitalization, increase the accessibility to digital services, and enhance digital literacy.

show abstract

Section: Smart City As a Planning Tool During Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart City and Crisis Management: Lessons for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hassankhani

Alidadi

Sharifi

et al. 2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Smart Cities initiative has had its share of critiques in academic as well as practice. Key issues identi ed by scholars are related to ambiguity in its conceptualization (Praharaj et al, 2018); too much focus on technological aspects of the city while ignoring long term vision, cultural setting, governance, and policy issues (Harris, 2015;Parida, 2020;Prasad & Alizadeh, 2020); inadequate attention on policy integration matters (Praharaj et al, 2018). Other scholars have attempted to understand the smart cities mission from an evolutionary perspective.…”

Section: Smart Cities Initiatives In India: a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hoelscher, (2016) studied the evolving national discourses in India, suggesting that despite the increase in clarity over the conceptualization of the concept and approaches towards policy integration, the chances of success of the vision remains uncertain. Prasad & Alizadeh, (2020) studied the evolving concept of smart cities across multiple cities through comparative policy analysis. They advanced the discourse by Hoelscher, ( 2016) by claiming that the national discourse has gradually evolved by having governance, citizen and infrastructure dimensions take centre stage in smart city policy making.…”

Section: Smart Cities Initiatives In India: a Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have previously critiqued the 100 Smart Cities imaginary in India, terming it as a 'post-colonial utopian dream', driven by neoliberal logics and entrepreneurial interest in the city that has the potential to undermine democratic values (see Chakrabarty, 2018;Das, 2020;Datta, 2015aDatta, , 2015bWatson, 2015). The relevant textual and visual perspectives and representations of smart city imaginaries across geographies have been extensively studied, documented, and examined across disciplines in theory (Hoelscher, 2016;Hollands, 2008;Kummitha & Crutzen, 2017;Lindner & Meissner, 2019;Prasad & Alizadeh, 2020;Söderström, Paasche, & Klauser, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fantasy visions, Informal Urbanization, and Local conflict: Contradictions of Smart City imaginaries in India

Parida¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Smart city imaginaries have emerged in southern cities driven by neoliberal logics in the urban space. In the Indian context, much scholarly work in India has continued to engage with sweeping accounts of cities as opposed to detailed empirical studies. In this paper, I attempt to address this gap through an in-depth ethnographic inquiry of a slum redevelopment project(part of Smart city initiative) in the city of Bhubaneswar, India. I seek to understand ways in which smart city initiatives influence the everyday life of the marginalized urban slum dwellers. Drawing on participant observation; document analysis; and semi-structured interviews, I put forth three key findings from the study that advance the notion that Smart Cities initiatives in Indian cities actively marginalize the slum dwellers by attempting to dominate through inclusion. I borrow from Foucauldian concept of ‘counter-conducts’ and its reimagination in planning by Huxley (2017) to demonstrate that smart cities discourses are counter-intuitively resulting in emergent spaces of resistance in the form of counter-hegemonic practices, thus allowing spaces for evolution of discourse from unfamiliar territories. I conclude by discussing that city planning and governance pathways in India risk creating complicated path dependencies that can lead to state-citizen conflicts in the future.

show abstract

“…It is our intention to capture in this journal the diversity that shapes current digital geographic scholarship – produced by those who consider themselves ‘geographers’ and those who do not. From research on ‘smart cities’ ( Certomà & Rizzi, 2017 ; Datta, 2015 ; Kitchin, 2014 ), building just smart cities ( Mann, Mitchell, Foth, & Anastasiu, 2020 ; Michalec, Hayes, & Longhurst, 2019 ; Perng, 2019 ; Perng & Maalsen, 2020 ) examinations of cybersecurity issues ( Dwyer & Silomon, 2019 ) and on to sustainability in and of the digital ( McLean, 2020 ; Pallett, Chilvers, & Hargreaves, 2019 ); from investigations of digital food geographies, digital tourism geographies ( Siegel, Tussyadiah, & Scarles, 2019 ), mobilities ( Dowling, 2018 ; Yeo & Lin, 2020 ), Southern digital geographies ( Prasad & Alizadeh, 2020 ; Rai, 2019 ) through to queer digital geographies ( Cockayne & Richardson, 2017 ); from urban ( Luque-Ayala, 2019 ) and rural digital geographies to issues of access and universal design (or the lack thereof) and the digital's role in producing, mediating, archiving and transmitting culture ( Kinsley, 2016 ; Withers, 2015 ); and work which engages with digital infrastuctures ( Warf 2020 ; Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2020 ; Alizadeh, Grubesic, & Helderop, 2020 ) the scope of this journal is expansive. In this inaugural year of the journal, and with unprecedented global events rapidly changing the way we live, we suggest three particular foci in the opening out of the conversation, three problematics that we argue are core to interrogating digital geographies and society: crisis, difference and injustice.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%