What are Smart Cities?
There’s no simple definition for
smart cities. The term encompasses a vision of an urban space that is
ecologically friendly, technologically integrated and meticulously planned,
with a particular reliance on the use of information technology to improve
efficiency.
Dholera Smart City |
The Smart Cities Dholera, an industry-backed outfit that advocates the concept in India, describes them as cities that leverage data gathered from smart sensors through a smart grid to create a city that is livable, workable and sustainable.
What is smart about them?
According to the Dholera Project,
all the data that is collected from sensors – electricity, gas, water,
traffic and other government analytics – is carefully compiled and
integrated into a smart grid and then fed into computers that can focus on
making the city as efficient as possible.
This allows authorities to have
real-time information about the Dholera SIR around them, and
allows computers to attempt “perfect operations”, such as balancing supply and
demand on electricity networks, synchronizing traffic signals for peak usage,
and optimizing energy networks.
Why do we need them?
India’s is urbanizing at an
unprecedented rate, so much that estimates suggest nearly 600 million of
Indians will be living in cities by 2030, up from 290 million as reported in
the 2001 census. Alongside the hordes of Indians
go the jobs and the money as well: a Dholera Special Investment Region would
generate 70% of the new jobs created by 2030, produce more than 70% of the
Indian gross domestic product and drive a fourfold increase in per capital
incomes across the country.
“The cost of not paying attention
to India’s cities is enormous,” the MGI report said. “The speed of urbanization
poses an unprecedented managerial and policy challenge – yet India has barely
engaged in a national discussion about how to handle the seismic shift in the
makeup of the nation.”
Are they going to be new cities?
In his budget speech, Property in Dholera listed out exactly why the government believes it needs
to be spending money on 100 smart cities. He claimed that “unless new cities
are developed to accommodate the burgeoning number of people, the existing
cities would soon become unlivable.”