A Critical Analysis of the Indian Smart Cities Mission

By Sugandha

Smart cities are seen as the new way of securing sustainable urban development to address pressing issues of global urbanization. Sustainability is still often conceived through an environmental lens, yet any change in the built environment has implications for the social dimension of sustainability. Social

• Language: English
• Publisher: brandontiminsky
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805241393

Book preview

I. POSITIONING & CONTEXTUALIZING THE STUDY

CHAPTER 1: Research Outline

1.1. Introduction

Smart cities have become a global phenomenon, initially by utilizing technological advancements and then by gradually moving towards a focus on digital databases (Carneiro et al. 2021; Townsend 2013). But is this all that constitutes a truly smart city? It is important to critically analyze and evaluate how and to what extent smart cities promote the social sustainability of an urban area and how and to what extent they incorporate inclusive planning practices. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between smart cities and social sustainability in the context of India’s 100 Smart Cities Mission (SCM) program.

Two cities in the SCM program, are selected for empirically based findings to appraise social sustainability in urban policy frameworks, plans and their implementation in the smart city context. The thesis deliberates on national smart city policies globally and critically appraises the Indian smart city guidelines and the national urban policy framework Figure 1-1.

elaborates the way the study unpacks the different concepts and inter-relates them, to achieve the objectives of this thesis.

•

Overview of phenomenon

Smart City

•

Defining smart cities

•

Evaluating smart city policies

•

Adaptation in Global South

•

Concepts & theories

Social Sustainability

•

Relevance in urban development

•

Identifying themes and factors

•

Methodological assessment

approach

•

Selection & process

Smart Cities

•

Policy integration

Mission

•

Stakeholders & institutions

•

Implementation process

Figure 1-1: Different layers of the study.

Source: Author.

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This chapter introduces the background of the study and the research problem, establishes the question and objectives of the investigation, and defines the two important concepts – smart cities and social sustainability. It briefly sets out the conceptual framework and presents the summary of methodological approach. The contribution of the study to current debate on social sustainability in the built environment is discussed alongside its contribution to future policies for smart cities. This introductory chapter concludes by describing the limitations of this research and outlining the thesis structure.

1.2. Background

1.2.1. The global urbanization trends and role of smart cities

While the whole world is urbanizing, the challenges of attaining sustainable development are more evident in the emerging economies where there is a fast pace of urbanization (Ellis & Roberts 2016). According to the United Nations (UN), the global urban population between 1950 and 2018 has multiplied rapidly from 751 million to 4.2 billion. Asia alone hosts 54%

of world’s urban population despite low levels of urbanization. The two developing continents, Asia and Africa, will be home to approximately 90% of the 2.5 billion world urban population, expected to increase by 2050. Between 2018 and 2050, 35% of the projected growth of the world’s urban population will be shared between three emerging economies – India, China, and Nigeria (United Nations 2018).

The evolution of Indian cities has been primarily organic. The cities vary based on their socio-economic and cultural spectrum with their heterogeneous nature that adds to the complexity of urban planning. Ahluwalia and Mohanty (2014) observe that the lack of planned development of Indian cities is the result of spatial planning not being coordinated with socio-economic development. A concern that inevitably arises is whether the gap between socio-economic and spatial planning is at the policy or at implementation level.

The prominent challenge faced by all cities today is to expand their capacity to adequately respond to the resources and infrastructure needs of increasing population (Aoun 2013) whilst ensuring social, environmental, and economic safeguards. In response to UN

projections, developing countries need to adapt to this process more quickly than developed countries did in the past. This dramatic transformation of cities has called for innovative and scalable measures to address problems of high density, physical expansion, and population growth for which ‘smart city’ is now a global catchphrase. Amidst expanding existing cities and building new ones to accommodate growing urban population numbers, the smart city 2

Image 1

concept is increasingly used as a guiding principle for the urban (re)development.

1.2.2. Paucity of urban social content in smart cities

The research in urban transformation is mature, whereas the research in smart cities, intelligent cities, and related areas is relatively new (Ojo et al. 2016, p. 24). According to O’Grady and O’Hare (2012), and Randhawa and Kumar (2017a), there is no specific model of framing a smart city, and neither is there a one-size-fits-all definition. In the process of understanding the technical side of being smart, the issues related to people and communities have been relatively neglected (Monfaredzadeh & Krueger 2015). The evidence of social content in smart cities is limited (Colding & Barthel 2017). The quality of urban life is mostly the reflection of a city’s social fabric as elaborated by Jacobs (1961), Lynch (1960), and Mumford (1937), and smart cities are no exception.

Given the attention towards smart cities in both the academy and industry, is the smart city a model of how we want our urban spaces to develop in this century? The most successful global cities today are marked by high levels of social wellbeing, not just by their economic activity. They are cities committed to social sustainability and inclusion, often described as

‘cities for all’ (City of Sydney n.d.; City of Sydney 2016). Therefore, it is critical to evaluate smart cities through the lens of social sustainability and appraise inclusive planning practices.

1.2.3. Urbanization challenges in India and the S mart Cities M ission

The smart city agenda has come to developing cities, and the challenges here are profound along with the imperative of being clear about ends and means. Amongst these cities, India’s urban landscape changes dramatically being the world’s largest democracy and fastest growing economy. The urban population of India increased from 18% in 1961 to 32% by 2011 (GoI 2011). With a high rate of urbanization, the country will add 590 million people to its cities by 2030 as reported by McKinsey Global (2015), raising the urban population to 40%. The growing population and migration from rural areas will add tremendous pressure for improved infrastructure and better service delivery (GoI 2011).

The urban policy and development plans in India have not been able to adequately meet the increasing intricacies of urban problems. On the prosperity index by UN-Habitat, Indian cities rank 45 out of 70 world cities (UN-Habitat 2012). The Legatum prosperity index ranks 3

India at 101 amongst 167 countries (LIF 2019). The performance of Indian cities regarding the delivery of public services has been consistently poor. Figure 1-2 shows poor living and sanitation conditions in urban India and highlights their increasing congestion and state of informality. Therefore, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) in India has acknowledged the requirement of comprehensive development of physical, economic, social, and institutional infrastructure to improve the quality of life. Development of smart cities through the 100 SCM is a step in that direction by the Government of India (GoI).

Figure 1-2: Urbanization challenges in India.

1. Poor housing condition, a slum in Faridabad. 2. Unhygienic public toilets and bathing spaces, a slum in Bhubaneswar. 3. Bottleneck on sector road, Faridabad.

Source: Field study.

‘Smart cities’ is a developing subject in India and due to lack of any specific definition (O’Grady & O’Hare 2012) it has an opportunity to develop its own meaning, depending upon the chosen direction of development. The available literature highlights both the need for smart city thinking in an Indian context (Jawaid & Khan 2015) and criticism of the SCM by academics (Bholey 2016; Naik 2015; Singh & Parmar 2019) arguing that it may not be able to handle the urbanization challenges.

1.3. Research Problem

Lewis Mumford (1937) in his essay ‘What is a city?’ argues that a city should be an embodiment of social institutions and not just a physical assemblage. The idea is supported by other scholars, Batty (2022) amongst the latest. Many cities have given priority to improvement of their functioning through physical planning but have recently started to acknowledge the role of social organisation.

The more specific recognition of relating social sustainability goals with smart city thinking has latterly encouraged cross-disciplinary investigations. Monfaredzadeh and Krueger (2015) explore smart cities as an opportunity to rethink and streamline stakeholder engagement, to promote more equitable and inclusive decision-making. Marsal-Llacuna (2016) emphasizes social sustainability through citizen-centric governance of Spanish smart cities. Mappiasse (2015) through a case study of the Indonesian city of Makassar reveals that a community must reinvent its urban consciousness and redefine the future of the city by mutual facilitation of all stakeholders. Aurigi and Odendaal (2020) warn that the expansiveness of smart city rhetoric weakens linkages to inclusivity, with specific urban precincts designated the key to the social sustainability nexus. What emerges from this well-intentioned scholarship is a fragmentation of approaches leading to ambiguity around the definition of the 4

socially sustainable smart city.

Recent years have observed a groundswell of scholarly academic research on the smart city concept. The investigations mostly promote the information technology dialogue of smart city developments including big data clustering (Kumar 2016), profiling of smart city sensors (Zhang 2016), forecasting through smart sensors (Karunaratne 2018) and smart city monitoring through spatiotemporal data analysis (Shao 2018) amongst others. Another set of scholars are concerned about the ill-defined and ideological approach towards the smart cities that they maintain, has little relevance to urban design and development initiatives undertaken in local contexts (Tompson 2018). Allam (2018) develops a smart city framework based on culture, metabolism and governance, to promote inclusivity and liveability in urban regeneration as suggested by the UN Sustainable Development goals. Praharaj (2019) in his thesis considers the Indian SCM and assimilates how the Smart City Proposal will converge with the broader urban development framework and how local governance needs to be reorganised. The work by Mussi (2017) explores social sustainability in Olympic parks and highlights the conflicts involved in implementing the sustainability goals. Conforming with these works, this study situates itself in the anthropocentric niche of the smart city concept and develops an association with social sustainability for future developments, connecting the threads of Indian SCM and urban development. Here, anthropocentric means the developments that focus on the citizens (Cameiro et al. 2021) and provides for their needs.

1.3.1. Defining smart city and social sustainability

Over the last decade, both social sustainability and smart city discourses have received significant attention from researchers in a wide variety of disciplines. In the scientific literature, they are reported in ways that are not always consistent. The former is cross-disciplinary, and the latter is multi-disciplinary and therefore both have no single definition.

• Smart City

Smart city literature has extensively examined the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) (Bakici et al. 2012; Batty 2022; Chourabi et al. 2012; Simonofski et al.

2019), the Internet of Things (IoT) (Joss et al. 2019) and wired infrastructure (Batty et al.

2012). These explanations of smart cities have led to a technocratic vision of the city that promotes continuous monitoring and surveillance for the optimal use of urban spaces and infrastructure. This approach includes business-driven urban interventions towards a competitive image of smart cities (Hollands 2008; Kitchin 2014; Söderström et al. 2014). The smart city literature suggests that advancing cities must integrate perspectives and needs of stakeholders in their plans and strategies.

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The smart cities initiative in India aims for significant transformation of cities achieved through enhanced urban competitiveness. However, it lacks clear direction on the concept of smart cities where focus is mainly on technological interventions without an overall framework to understand the need and impact of technology on urban development (Batty 2022; Bhattacharya et al. 2015). The ambiguity created by ‘no globally accepted definition’ by the visionaries of the SCM has led global corporates, technology vendors and real estate companies to define the smart city in a way financially suitable to them. Many corporates published their smart city visionary documents soon after the announcement of SCM by GoI.

The massive real estate and industrial projects prior to announcement of SCM, like Gujarat International Finance Tech (GIFT) city in Gandhinagar, the city of Lavasa in Maharashtra and Dholera Special Investment Region in Gujarat, branded themselves as smart cities to capture the new business market.

• Social Sustainability

The term ‘social sustainability’ is an evolving subject (Colantonio & Dixon 2011; Yiftachel

& Hedgcock 1993) whose theoretical basis is unclear (Littig & Griessler 2005) and results in a multitude of definitions. Although a substantial amount of scientific literature has examined economic and environmental sustainability in the context of urban development, the debate on social sustainability is underdeveloped (Dempsey et al. 2011; Shirazi & Keivani 2017). The increasing urbanization pressure and simultaneously evolving needs of citizens present constant challenges. There is an emerging need to consider social sustainability as an integral part of the urban agenda, enroute to balanced urban development (Shirazi & Keivani 2019a).

Being a multi-disciplinary concept and with no general definition, various key themes relevant to specific disciplines are operationalized (Colantonio 2010). Researchers have identified other key components, alongside, collaborative planning, which is stated as an integral part of social sustainability that supports the valued participation of all stakeholders.

Social sustainability in Indian urban development has been broadly ignored and focussed primarily on providing basic infrastructure development (Hemani et al. 2012). It is not really on the agenda of development plans, relegated to the wisdom of urban professionals. By contrast, social sustainability has gained considerable recognition and has been adopted by countries such as Canada and Australia in their urban development policies. However, in India, the urban policies on sustainability are characterised by fragmented and sluggish approaches on the issues such as poverty and basic social needs, which lag behind the enormous unplanned and inequitable development in most Indian cities (Hemani et al. 2012).

• Social sustainability in smart cities

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The above discussion raises the question: are smart cities the panacea for the increasing urbanization problem? Theoretically and from a historical point of view, urban transformation through the smart cities concept appears very promising, but it is more of a utopian experiment. There are views that the implementation of smart cities could lead to polarization in urban social structure (Batty 2022; ORF 2016). Another viewpoint is that cities have inherent smartness, and their intelligence resides in their citizens (Greenfield 2013). Sterling (2018) argues that digital smart cities cannot magically make our future cities more affordable and resilient. With the view that smart cities need an anthropocentric design approach, social sustainability is an integral component of future development (Hopwood et al.

2005). While smart cities primarily aim at enhancing performance through innovative use of digital data and technology, a social sustainability perspective stresses the critical interconnections between people and place.

1.3.2. Framew ork for social sustainability assessment

There is a plethora of methods to assess environmental sustainability, but little has been done to assess social sustainability. Also, there has been a lack of appropriate criteria and a framework to evaluate smart city policy, intent, and implementation (Bholey 2017; ORF

2016). Marsal-Llacuna (2016) emphasis the ‘citizen-centeredness’ of city policies to account for social sustainability, by monitoring city performance in safe-guarding citizenship rights.

This study employs a human-centred approach to understand technological smart city policy.

Similarly, there is a lack of social sustainability assessment methodology, probably due to the constant shift in the nature of social sustainability themes – from hard (measurable, technological, replicable) to soft (less quantifiable, social, local) (Colantonio 2008b; Mancebo 2020). Some literature suggests that recurring themes should be considered for social assessment (Partridge 2005) whereas others mention that the themes should be based on practical understanding of context and political agendas (Littig & Griessler 2005). Particularly in the context of the Global South, which faces challenges of rapid urbanisation and lacks organised access to reliable data, a different approach is essential for benchmarking unique criteria that can support an informed assessment framework. This study identifies the recurring social sustainability themes in the literature and augments the list with individual contextual requirements.

India has distinctive social problems because of pressures created by the rapidly increasing and uneven growth of the cities. This calls for place-based development policies through community participation. The Liveability Standards in Cities (GoI 2017b) developed by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) to measure urban socio-economic conditions in Indian cities, focuses on very few aspects of social development. The above discussion 7

highlights that there is a research gap in the development of a sound social sustainability assessment framework, caused by social factors in the rhetoric of the built environment. A local approach to building performance standards based on local context is considered critical.

1.3.3. Role of collaborative planning in smart cities

Smart city development challenges its designers, managers, and citizens to create innovative solutions when solving technical and social problems. To solve complex problems, which are growing and diffused widely, facilitating collaborative thinking is necessary (Snow et al.

2016). Collaboration is a process of collective decision-making to explore differences and develop a common actionable strategy by all the stakeholders in a constructive manner (Healey 1997; Sandercock 1998). Collaborative planning practices can be used to promote greater civic participation (Snow et al. 2016).

SCM in India promotes a collaborative planning framework in which different institutions were made responsible for carrying out specific actions at different stages of smart city development (Bhattacharya et al. 2015). However, there are lacunae identified in the role played by public participation by various observers like Khan et al. (2018a), Randhawa & Kumar (2017a) and Bhattacharya et al. (2015). What India needs is an integrated collaborative planning approach to a social sustainability framework in developments, to deliver people centric cities.

1.4. Research Question & Objectives

From the problems stated above, the main question of this research emerged: how social sustainability is excluded and included in an Indian smart city analysis?

Three different scales are employed – macro-scale national level social factors, meso-scale view of stakeholders and micro-scale actual planning policies in practice. The study advances the prioritization of social content in smart cities through a case study of India. The objectives of this study are:

1. To investigate the role of social sustainability in the context of smart cities.

2. To develop an assessment framework to operationalize social sustainability.

3. To identify the critical factors that affect social sustainability in Indian cities and to evaluate the SCM guidelines and proposals.

4. To inquire into the Indian smart cities’ aspirations and implementation challenges.

5. To determine the integration of social sustainability in the two comparative cases 8

Image 2Image 3

from smart cities in India.

The first objective establishes the need for socially sustainable development and identifies the themes relevant in the context of the built environment. It reviews the social themes in smart city definitions and identifies the challenges of the smart city model in the Global South. The second objective aims to develop an assessment framework to operationalize social sustainability in the developments of the smart city. The third objective recognizes the macro-scale social sustainability themes and factors relevant to Indian urban development. The findings are based on a literature review of key Indian urbanization challenges and an appraisal of Indian SCM program. It further devises an evaluation criterion for building urban social typologies based on the review of 100 Smart City Proposals (SCPs). At meso- scale, the fourth objective builds upon the perceptions of local urban professionals about smart goals and their associated challenges. Lastly, the fifth objective empirically examines the urban policies, stakeholders’ views, smart city vision and its implementation in the two case study cities at the micro-scale.

1.5. Conceptual Framework

The social perspective of the smart city suggests that a city can achieve positive behavioural changes (Sanchez et al. 2014) by using participatory technologies for engaging citizens in conversations around community topics during the planning process (Fredericks et al. 2018).

Smart city literature recognizes bottom-up initiatives as a means for urban innovation (Caragliu et al. 2011; Han & Hawken 2018) while identifying the need for accountable collaborative governance based on integrated thinking (Praharaj et al. 2018a) and creation of urban planning as a core function (Praharaj et al. 2018b). Smart city projects must not only face the problems of today’s cities, but also be able to respond to any potential future problems of the cities in the coming time (Monzon 2015).

Study Focus

Figure 1-3: Graphical elaboration of study area.

Source: Author.

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As understood by the literature study, smart city developments have many aspects and facets world-wide. Indian urban development today is customizing the concept within its relevant policy framework where sustainable and inclusive development, clean environment and the application of smart solutions are being given utmost importance by the government (GoI 2017a). The study attempts to look at selected planned smart city developments through the lens of collaboratively achieved social sustainability. Figure 1-3 elaborates the study area of this thesis which focuses on the intersection of social sustainability, collaborative planning, and the urban planning sphere of smart cities.

To comprehend the study area and appreciate the conceptual framework, the remainder of this section establishes the relevance of social sustainability in the context of the built environment of smart cities.

1.5.1. Social sustainability

Social sustainability has been part of sustainable development for almost two decades, but this human dimension has often been downplayed or even ignored with the major focus on environmental and economic sustainability (Monfaredzadeh & Krueger 2015; Vallance et al.

2011). The thoughtful application of human needs is vital for prioritizing the competing demands of urban development that includes balanced social, environment and economic growth. Despite the human-centric focus of the definition of sustainability (Hopwood et al.

2005), yet little attention has been given to the definition of social sustainability in the disciplines of the built environment (Dempsey et al. 2011; Shirazi & Keivani 2017). The anthropocentric focus promotes the ‘soft’ theme approach (Manzi et al. 2010) which includes less measurable factors such as sense of place, social integration, and happiness; complementing or at times replacing the traditional ‘hard’ themes of social sustainability such as employment and poverty alleviation (Sachs 1999). Due to the mix of physical and non-physical factors attached to the definition of social sustainability, its assessment is not straightforward (Colantonio 2009a).

The important feature of social sustainability is the tripartite relationship within the concept of sustainability. Primarily, this relationship defines the vision and various discourses of social sustainability at global level outlining the international debates pertinent to local level and with policy making (Manzi et al. 2010). To understand the relevance of social sustainability for the built environment, a twofold study is important, in the conceptual definition that has changed from traditionally ‘hard’ to more recent ‘soft’ theme approach over the period, and the methodology for its assessment (Colantonio 2010), focusing on the ways in which it 10

should be incorporated into planning and projects (Shirazi & Keivani 2017). The first one, necessitates theoretical observations to establish the definition of social sustainability and the latter needs more empirical and practical investigations through literature and applications, which appraise policies, programmes, plans and projects against social sustainability criteria.

• Conceptualising/ defining social sustainability

Social sustainability is one dimension of the sustainability concept. Figure 1-4 illustrates the changing relative position and importance of the social pillar within the dynamic concept of sustainability developing over time. According to the 1992 Rio Declaration, sustainable development accounts for balancing the three pillars of sustainability (environment, economy, society) and prioritizing them by trade-offs (Manzi et al. 2010). In contrast, the Russian doll model downplays the social aspect and suggests that economic development is most important in social benefits within controlled and unchangeable environmental conditions. There are others who challenge the tripartite model (based on Rio Declaration 1922) and the Russian doll model