What makes cities really smart

There is no one definition for India’s proposed smart cities. The Ministry of Urban Development provides benchmarks for various services — maximum commute time should be 30 minutes in medium-sized cities and 45 minutes in metros; water availability must be 135 litres per capita per day; 95 per cent of homes should have shops, parks, primary schools and recreational areas within 400 metres, and so on. The proposed cities range from Varanasi to Dholera to Amravati, covering brownfield and greenfield areas. Benchmarks would be different for both; given lack of significant Internet penetration, brownfield smart cities cannot, for instance, focus on skyscrapers or lavish promenades first.

City planning has undergone several changes since Independence. In the 1950s, regional planning and the city master plan grew in importance, but stayed divorced from the complex realities of a poor, independent, post-colonial country. While urban poverty rose, master plans fetishised about leisurely, low-density, spread-out cities, and obsessed over removing slums. This “high modernism” resulted in plans for newer cities. The National Commission on Urbanisation identified 329 cities called GEMs (Generators of Economic Momentum), which were further divided into National Priority Centres and State Priority Centres. Urbanisation was expected to grow along those corridors.

Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh were especially planned to represent modern India, emblems of “a new town, a symbol of India’s freedom, unfettered by traditions of the past” (Nehru, 1948). A ‘garden city’ with no high-rise buildings, Chandigarh’s wide boulevards broke the city into self-sufficient sectors, promoting liveability and exclusion.

However, the structure had its failures. Chandigarh’s urban planning was defined by an “absence of local authority, a lack of understanding of the local culture and values on the part of the planners, and the history of the region.” (Kalia, 1985, 135). In a survey of 21 cities in the Annual Survey of India’s City Systems (2014, Janaagraha Centre), Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh came close to the bottom in quality of life. Bhubaneswar scored low in urban capacities and resources as well as in transparency, accountability and participation.

Over time, national plans grew more reactive, and stuck to managing things as they were. A desire for better, cleaner, inclusive cities remained unfulfilled. We renamed more cities than building new ones.

The idea of a smart city, for most of the 20th century, was science fiction. But cities can now integrate critical infrastructure such as roads, rails, subways and airports; optimise resources better; and plan preventive maintenance. Given India’s finance crunch, any smart city we plan should focus first on three things: urban transportation, e-governance and land titling.

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