What according to you is a smart city?

First of all, let us be clear that smart cities are not about building Disneylands for showcasing the latest digital technologies. Technologies are merely the tools to achieve good urban outcomes, they should not become the focus in themselves. . Therefore, a smart city is really about the clustering of smart people, smart institutions, smart public transport systems, smart municipal laws and so on. It is about creating urban centers that can adapt to changing economic, social and environmental needs. Often, the smartest outcomes can be achieved through the intelligent application of basic technologies. For example, the single most important ingredient in a smart transport system is walking, the most basic of technologies. All public transport systems are based on walking the first and last mile – yet, walkability is totally ignored in Indian urban design.

How are smart cities for the urban poor too?

One ingredient of a city’s success is its ability to take along all sections of society. This is particularly true of a large emerging economy like India where the urban landscape will have to absorb hundreds of millions of migrants from rural areas over the next couple of decades. Thus, we need to design for a constant flow of people who enter the city and want to climb the social and economic ladder. This means that urban poverty must not be seen as a static problem but a flow. This has very important implications for how we provide housing, employment, education and public amenities for the poor. For example, we need to design smartly for basic rental housing, property rights, secondary markets, financing and public goods that allow new migrants to enter the urban ecosystem. As one group makes its way up the ladder, a new round of migrants takes its place. Any static solution to urban poverty will not just fail but will worsen the problem for the future pipeline of migrants.

How can we develop smart cities while preserving its culture?

You are absolutely right that India’s future cities must be built to reflect its cultural and ecological context. Smart cities are not about building cookie-cutter cities by blindly applying the currently fashionable technology. Socialist era cities like Dispur, Chandigarh, Durgapur, and Navi Mumbai are not just cultural wastelands but are not even economic successes because they mechanically applied Le Corbusier’s idea that cities and buildings were machines for living. Cities are not machines but evolving eco-systems. Culture and history are an important ingredients of the ecosystem. Thus, the new smart cities must not only preserve pre-existing heritage buildings but also make space for new temples, theatres, stadiums, iconic buildings and so on. This is also true of natural history – we need to spend time thinking the trees that will be planted and how they will look in fifty years time. Many cities have river and sea fronts that can be leveraged. In the Deccan, for instance, the landscape has large rock formations and boulders. The urban design must incorporate them into the city rather than level them to the ground. This is what gives cities personality in the long run.

What is your opinion on the recently announced guidelines & city challenge competition by the government?

Such national-level guidelines, by their very nature, must be general. Success will depend on how imaginatively these guidelines are followed in individual cases. One advantage of the city challenge competition is that it will throw up all kinds of new ideas and will also force city-planners to share their overall vision for their respective cities. Right now there is no transparency on what each city administration is trying to do. Moreover, it will create a sense of pride and ownership over the chosen ideas that, in turn, will improve implementation. Common citizens, meanwhile, will have an opportunity to hear about these ideas and can then observe the subsequent implementation. In short, this is potentially a way to get everyone involved in the urbanization process.

Smart city development is a matter of decades,and not couple of years. By the time we develop a smart  city and equip it with the latest technology and infrastructure, the city could become out dated with the development of newer technology.Your take?

You’re absolutely right that cities have to be able to evolve with changing technology. This is why smart cities are not about hardwiring today’s technology; that would condemn a city to obsolescence within a very short period. This is why the latest technology should be used to bolster more durable aspects of the city. For example, we need to have fully digitized property records so that it protects property rights. Similarly, new mapping technology can be used to ensure good walking networks for the city. In both these examples, notice that technology is not the end in itself but a way to enhance a more durable attribute of the city. Even if technology changes, property rights and walkability will still be important. Contrast this with Detroit that was dependent on automobile technology for its economy. When it lost its lead in this sector, the city also died with it.

How can a city develop self sustaining smart city developments & not pass a substantial burden to tax  payers?

Smart cities must be successful economic engines that generate taxes and revenues. They may need some initial seed money to get going but eventually they must be able to more than sustain themselves in the medium term. This is why Chandigarh, the poster-child of socialist era urban planning, is such a failure. It remains a subsidy scheme for civil servants despite being the capital of two prosperous states. What little economic energy it shows comes from the suburb of Mohali which is outside the city’s master-plan. If a smart city is not sustaining itself economically, it not smart by definition.

What will India’s new cities look like when they finished?

It is important to recognize that building next generation cities is about applying certain key principles, but it is not about standardized outcomes. This is particularly true of India where the new cities must reflect the diverse economic, cultural and natural landscapes. Moreover, not all next generation urbanization is about brand new cities but will be expanding or regenerating existing cities. Thus, Varanasi could be a successful smart city as a hub for religious, intellectual and tourist activity but the application of technology would be very different from developing Mumbai as an international financial center. In Varanasi, the focus will be cleaning the river and restoring heritage buildings whereas in Mumbai it would be about creating international connectivity, speedy enforcement of contracts and so on.

What adoptions from international smart city developments can India take?

Different cities around the world can teach us different things depending on the context. However, there are a few principles that they all have in common. Take for instance, the principle that a smart city must be about clustering human capital. One implication is that new universities and colleges should be built within the city rather walled off in isolated campuses. This will allow the city to benefit from the flow of talented young people. Contrast this with how we have been building universities since independence. Kanpur and Kharagpurgets no benefit from being host to an IIT while London benefits enormously from LSE and LBS, New York from NYU and Columbia, and Boston from MIT and Harvard. If you want Allahabad to be a smart city, one must start by reviving Allahabad University.

 

Another example is the principle of mix-and-match. Indian city planners tend to think of master-planning is silos rather than in terms of curating an eco-system. Contrast the Formula One circuit in Singapore and Delhi: Delhi saw it as an engineering problem for fast cars while Singapore saw it as a way to bring buzz to the center of the city. So Delhi built a custom built racing circuit outside the city while Singapore got the cars to race though the city-center at night. The result is that Delhi now has a white elephant that is barely used while Singapore just improved its city roads and enjoys a tourism bonanza every year. Imagine instead the international tourism publicity that we could have had from racing Formula One cars around Connaught Place and Rajpath at night.