Hello,
Smart city!
Smart city! Smart city! everywhere, whether Government or public or private
forums or individual conversations, we come to see, feel and, even sense, this
word, as the entire focus and attention of the Government, when it comes to
urban development, seem to have shifted to creating a new world of urban
dwellers looking smart in every sense of the word. In all fairness, seeing the
messy conditions in urban conglomerations in India, whether small or big ones,
old or new ones it makes strong sense and appeals every one. To begin with, the
Government has already announced with definite commitment creating 98 smart
cities in the country, giving due weightage to regional and other
considerations. They have also committed budgetary allocation of required
resources through planned interventions for those cities. Institutional
mechanism and channels, equally important for their implementation has been and
are being put in place. Even private sector involvement is being roped in to
promote smart cities in the country. Needless to say, while the importance of
Government, public and private participation for such an initiative can hardly
be undermined, it becomes, perhaps, more important to have smart people and
communities living them to realise the dreams of smart cities and truly create
the world of smart conglomerations. Further, if we dream to create smart cities
in urban centres, it becomes still more important with greater urgency to lay
emphasis on creating smart villages also in the same spirit in order to make
the urban smart cities more sustainable to avoid demographic and resultant
pressures. Again, it may be recognised that creation of smart cities or
villages would also warrant sociological integration of diversified and multi-polar
linguistic and cultural world.
While the
debate goes on and will go on, it becomes challenging as to how to make our
people and community really smart to match the emerging needs and aspirations
of the new urban conglomerations. Of course, this would need, among others, a
participative approach to taking along the public at large and familiarising
them on larger common and collective approaches and public conducts and at the
same time seeking their perceptions and expectations of a smart city to make it
more acceptable and accommodative.
One must not
forget that India has been a nation of nations with multi-ethnicities and
varied lingual and cultural identities’, sometimes leading to social
maladjustments and even conflicts. The smart cities, as it is visualised and
conceptualised by the planners and policy makers, would involve creating urban
environment with a new socio-cultural world with collective purposes of living
and leading a truly smart life. This will certainly generate a new social
fabric and a new sociology conducive to living a happy and contended life at
personal, family, collective and common level. The present forum seeks to make
a humble effort with a modest aim to work in these directions by involving you
and anybody for that matter across the globe through the world of webs and
internets sharing experiences, views, comments, methodologies, and suggestions
to further strengthen and improving the concept of smart cities and joining
hands to create a new sociology of urban environment with constant and
continued participative and interactive mechanism. To begin with, I wish to
interact with you in person by sharing the following:
I am a city
dweller just like you. I am here to share with you my thoughts while I interact
with cities and people living here. I will not get in any technical definitions
and details about what cities are and its ever emerging nature and how its
growth patterns are defined theoretically in economic or urban planning terms.
You can refer to Google or Yahoo to get those answers and take references. I
would like to take this opportunity to share with you my experiences and
knowledge in learning to become smart residents and make our own smart vigilant
communities. While doing so, I look forward to learn from you too as this forum
is open for participation. Mission is to spread awareness about smart city
concepts and how community driven approaches can contribute in making our
cities smart.
Honestly, I
first thought I would formally write about all my findings and read more and
write more and validate my finings thoroughly by peer reviews, etc. But
this approach becomes very lengthy. In today’s technology driven pace that we
live in, it hardly allows us that much time if it’s really about our fast
growing cities. Our cities call for a much more prompt and responsive approach
in knowledge / information sharing, decision making, in our actions and
behaviour. Though the empirical paper writing or theoretical approach or
literature review writings are fantastic for authors who want to publish
papers/ books and may get name and fame by their hard work and efforts, my
intension here is simply to reach out to people and communicate for ideas in a
participatory approach. Hence blogging becomes the best opportunity for me here
and I hope this brings us all together and participate in making our smart
cities beautiful, healthy and liveable in all sense.
I totally
believe in giving due credits for the sweet work rendered by others. As a step in this direction, necessary links of
all such works would be provided to allow for making references or validate
findings. I feel, very soon I wouldn’t have to do that either, as Google may
come up with a technology that will highlight paragraphs/ texts of thoughts
with its sources when copied. And who knows, the entire methodology for writing
may completely transform in future.
Here in this
forum we will cover topics related to various aspects of what we call ‘smart
cities’ and ‘being smart residents’, mainly by giving choices and also
involving in decisions we make in every aspect of life using technologies. We
will talk about community driven approaches. We will discuss about various case
studies in western world/ India that may set as good smart community/ city
examples in Indian context. We will talk about governments / public roles in
making smart cities, social and economic impacts, technologies, data and
analytics, opportunities/ threats with technology shaping our cities, smart
gadgets / apps that can be used for becoming smart citizens and much more. You
are most welcome to share your knowledge and wisdom on any of the issues/
aspects relating to these and many more which make this endeavour more
resourceful and enriching for collective use by planners, policy makers,
individuals, groups, or any body working in this field. Of course, you alone
will be given due credit for your information and insightful thoughts.
Pallavi & Tej
