Smart Cities

In the wake of the global enthusiasm for smart cities, the central government launched the ambitious Smart Cities Mission in 2015. Based on a detailed analysis of proposals of the top 60 cities, the mission is located within the larger urban reform process initiated in the 1990s. An attempt has been made to define smart cities to understand how they envisage questions of urban transformations, inclusion and democracy. The proposals reveal an excessive reliance on consultants, lack of effective participation, a common set of interventions that are accepted as “smart solutions,” and a shift towards greater control of urban local bodies by state governments.

Globally, planners play a vital role in planning liveable, sustainable and resilient cities. In the Indian context, planners and planning need to be placed at the heart of our development process. By undermining our states' town planning machinery and shunning town planners from the task of planning our cities, we, in turn, risk undermining the potential benefits of such programmes to urban India.