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The Language of Smart Cities Using Discourse Analysis to Study India’s Smart Cities Mission
Uttara Purandare.
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 30, 2023.
Excerpt – This paper uses discourse analysis methods to get a better understanding of India’s Smart Cities Mission which was launched in 2015. It focuses on nine policy documents and assessment frameworks published by the nodal ministry at federal level to guide 100 smart cities.
More info – https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/8706
courtesy – Centre d’Etudes Sud-Asiatiques et Himalayennes
Smart and eco-cities in India and China
Johanna I. Höffken &Agnes Limmer.
Local Environment :The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 24(7), 2019.
Abstract : Smart and eco-cities have become important notions for thinking about urban futures. This article contributes to these ongoing debates about smart and eco-urbanism by focussing on recent urbanisation initiatives in Asia.
Our study of India’s Smart Cities Mission launched under the administration of Narendra Modi and China’s All-In-One eco-cities project initiated by Xi Jinpin unfolds in two corresponding narratives. Roy and Ong’s [2011. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell] “worlding cities” serves as the theoretical backdrop of our analysis. Based on a careful review of a diverse set of academic literature, policy and other sources we identify five process-dimensions for analysing the respective urban approaches.
We show how the specific features of China’s and India’s urban focus, organisation, implementation, governance and embedding manifest both nations’ approaches to smart and eco-urbanism. We argue that India’s Smart City Mission and China’s All-in-One project are firmly anchored in broader agendas of change that are set out to transform the nation and extend into time.
The Indian Smart City Mission is part of a broader ambition to transform the nation enabling her “smart incarnation” in modernity. Smart technologies are seen as the key drivers of change. In China the framework of ecological civilisation continues a 5000-year historical tradition of civilisation excellence. By explicitly linking eco-urbanism to the framework, eco-cities become a means to enact ecological civilisation on the (urban) ground.
URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2019.1628730
Courtesy: T&F
Cutting through the clutter of smart city definitions: A reading into the smart city perceptions in India
Sarbeswar Praharaj, Hoon Han.
City, Culture and Society 18, September 2019.
Abstract : Smart city development has emerged as a favoured response to the 21st-century urbanisation challenges. A wide range of definitions surfaced over the last decade characterising the smart city, primarily pushed by the global elite corporations and influential academics. Simultaneously, a series of urban development expressions, such as digital city, knowledge city, eco-city is used interchangeably with the smart city, significantly mystifying the reading of the concept.
This paper, first argue that smart city interpretation needs and requires the input and contribution of the local stakeholders. The aim of this research is to provide an evidence-based framework to capture the perception of local urban actors in India vis-à-vis their interpretation of smart cities given the existing urban conditions and the proposed developments under the 100 Smart Cities Mission.
This research also examines the underlying linkage between the smart city and its conceptual relatives and highlights the ones with a significant convergence with the emerging urban agenda in India’s Smart Cities Mission. The analysis presented in this paper show that to emerge as a holistic concept, smart cities definition models should engage with the sustainability and community issues, beyond the use of digital technology.
The research reveals that the Indian urban stakeholders strongly associate the smart city concept with sustainable city and eco-city, much more than the technology-loaded phrases such as ubiquitous city and digital city. The first-of-its-kind inclusive approach developed in this paper to define smart city takes on the monopolies of top-down smart city definitions and support the democratisation of the rapidly proliferating concept.
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877916618302935
Courtesy: Sciencedirect
Smart Cities for Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Transitions: Some options for India
Ehtisham Ahmad, Giorgio Brosio and Ruth Kattumuri
This paper focuses on property taxation. Its main messages are oriented to revamp its role in financing urban transition in India. In particular, we suggest that:
Simple design matters, as does arms’ length administration and modern information management and transparent governance.
Intergovernmental transfers, including both equalization and tied special purpose transfers need to be properly designed to provide incentives to use subnational revenue handles.
Tax administration and institutions are to be designed to prevent rent‐seeking
behaviour
Also, linkages with national tax policy and administration framework have to be established.
URL: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/textonly/india/publications/working_papers/IOWP10-AhmadBrosioKattumuri.pdf
Courtesy: LSE
Demystifying the Indian smart city: An Empirical reading of the smart cities mission
CPR Working paper , 10 August 2018.
The newly elected federal Government of India (GoI) launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in 2015 with the stated purpose of improving the governance and infrastructural deficiencies that plague Indian cities. Missing, however, in the pageantry of the new programme is a cohesive understanding of a smart city.
While the government documentation repeatedly implies infinite liberty for cities to self-define their understanding of ‘smartness’, the actions demonstrate that there is a larger idea of ‘smartness’ that the federal government seeks to implement. It is at this disjunction, between the rhetoric and practice of the Mission, that this paper finds its core research question – ‘What constitutes a smart city in India?’
Through a detailed reading of the government documentation of the top 99 cities, the paper argues that the there is a profound chasm between the professed objectives of the Mission and the strategies enacted to achieve these objectives.
Courtesy: CPR
Urban innovation through policy integration: Critical perspectives from 100 smart cities mission in India
Sarbeswar Praharaj , Jung Hoon Han and Scott Hawken.
City, Culture and Society, 12. 2018.
Smart cities commentary often highlights the technological and entrepreneurial aspects of the city. But, the dimensions of local policy and politics is surprisingly little debated. Mega cities in the rapidly urbanising economies develop a plethora of urban policies and plans cultivated by various state and local agencies. These are often overlapping or conflicting and as a result do not produce desired outcomes.
Prospective smart cities tend to add a new layer of plan and devise extra institutional instrument in to this already complex environment. We challenge this idea of smart cities being another stand-alone initiative and explore how integration of plans and unification of smart city visions with the overarching city development goals can better support effective urban transformation and local innovation.
This research addresses the complex planning and governance mechanisms in the world’s fastest growing economy – India – which has initiated an ambitious mission to transform 100 urban areas across the country into “smart cities”. The federal program involves the provision of centrally devised guidelines for smart city development. These combined with local level policy and institutional initiatives in designated smart cities in India shape a multiplicity of policies and programs.
A two-level case study is presented in this paper as a critical polemic on this policy landscape. Investigation along these lines provide opportunities for identification of underlying patterns and challenges of smart city developments in India. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for building sound smart city policy frameworks in emerging economies.
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877916617301273
Courtesy: Sciencedirect
Urban innovation through policy integration: Critical perspectives from 100 smart cities mission in India
Sarbeswar Praharaj, Jung Hoon Han, and Scott Hawken.
City, Culture and Society, 12, 2018.
Smart cities commentary often highlights the technological and entrepreneurial aspects of the city. But, the dimensions of local policy and politics is surprisingly little debated. Mega cities in the rapidly urbanising economies develop a plethora of urban policies and plans cultivated by various state and local agencies. These are often overlapping or conflicting and as a result do not produce desired outcomes. Prospective smart cities tend to add a new layer of plan and devise extra institutional instrument in to this already complex environment. We challenge this idea of smart cities being another stand-alone initiative and explore how integration of plans and unification of smart city visions with the overarching city development goals can better support effective urban transformation and local innovation. This research addresses the complex planning and governance mechanisms in the world’s fastest growing economy – India – which has initiated an ambitious mission to transform 100 urban areas across the country into “smart cities”. The federal program involves the provision of centrally devised guidelines for smart city development. These combined with local level policy and institutional initiatives in designated smart cities in India shape a multiplicity of policies and programs. A two-level case study is presented in this paper as a critical polemic on this policy landscape. Investigation along these lines provide opportunities for identification of underlying patterns and challenges of smart city developments in India. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for building sound smart city policy frameworks in emerging economies.
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877916617301273
Courtesy: sciencedirect
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