Achieving Sustainable Urbanization: A Study of Smart Cities

Abstract

By 2030, six out of ten people will live in urban areas. City dwellers must contend with increased congestion, waste and water management issues, and overcrowded, polluting transportation systems, all of which pose direct negative effects for citizens’ physical health and wellbeing (State of Green website). Accommodation of the growing urban population in a sustainable manner is a humongous task in front of every country specially emerging economies like India.  Very recently government of India has come out with the proposal of smart cities mission all over the country. This paper is an attempt to look into the concept and definition of ‘smart city’ and delve whether the ‘technology’ and ‘ecology’ would go hand in hand to meet the challenges and opportunities for sustainable urbanization.  There is no universally accepted definition of smart cities yet and a smart city may have a different subtext in developing countries like India than any other developed country like United States. Even in India, the definition may vary for different states. The paper through an extensive study of literature around the world and examples of sample smart cities in India has tried to draw some significant insight about the concept.