Socio-spatial implications of smart city development in India

In 2015, the Government of India created the Smart Cities Mission which proposed development of 100 smart cities to address the challenges of urbanisation through smart solutions. More recently, during the global pandemic, India has recorded the world’s second highest number of COVID cases. COVID has pushed Indian cities to reshape their smart city efforts and leverage smart solutions and facilities in fight against the pandemic. For example, 47 cities across the country converted their Command-and-Control-Centres (built as part of the Mission) to COVID-War-Rooms to lead the city-level emergency response.

It is noted (Das, 2020; Deloitte, 2020) that the Indian smart cities have taken the pandemic as an opportunity to innovate, learn, collaborate, and find ways to enable evidence-based urban governance in response to the crisis. Critics, on the other hand, are concerned that ‘COVtech’ - as public-sector-led technologies of monitoring, management, and containment of the virus - violate data privacy protocols and can be used as surveillance tools (Kitchin, 2020) with devastating economic and social impacts on marginalized groups (Datta et al., 2020).

In this project, I argue that India’s ‘smart’ response to the global pandemic is multiscale and has different modes of existence; and further empirical studies are required to capture its complex socio-spatial implications. Critical investigation of the ways in which smart city development in India has been reshaped to fight COVID will shed light on the opportunities and challenges embedded in the smart urbanism in response to crisis.

This research project is part of a broader research agenda focused on the global trends of smart urbanism from a ‘Southern urban critique’ perspective, which defines ‘South’ not as a location, but as a power relation that has long been used to silence and sideline. In this research, I have put forward ‘the right to the smart city in the Global South’ theoretical framework to: 1) ‘expose’ in the sense of analysing and articulating the roots of smart city shortcomings; 2) ‘propose’ in the sense of working with those affected or excluded to construct normative alternative visions for ‘just smart city’; and 3) ‘politicise’ in the sense of clarifying the political implications of what is exposed and proposed, and supporting, organising, and mobilising around the alternative visions.

The project, although informed by the knowledge produced in the context of the Global South, has the potential to transform the smart urbanism discourse globally. It creates and contributes to an urban discourse that is rigorously mindful of the ongoing struggles for equity and equality within cities but also at the transregional and transnational levels.

The project has expanded through additional funding via International SDG Collaboration Program at The University of Sydney in partnership with Tata Institute of Social Science, University College London, Pehchan, and Homeless Collective India.

• Alizadeh, T., & Prasad, D. (2023). The right to the smart city in the Global South: A research agenda. Urban Studies, 61(3), 426-444. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231183167
• Deepti Prasad, Tooran Alizadeh, Cross examination of smart urbanism and Southern urbanism: A systematic literature review in search of ‘Southern smart urbanism’, Cities, Volume 155, 2024, 105459, ISSN 0264-2751, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.105459
• Alizadeh T, Kurian L, Bansal C, Prasad D. Smart Cities Mission in the Face of COVID: Scope and Scale of ‘Smart’ COVID Responses in India. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(22):7036. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20227036

• Associate Professor Tooran Alizadeh,  University of Sydney
• Dr. Deepti Prasad,  University of Sydney
• Dr. Ratoola Kundu, Tata Institute of Social Science
• Dr. Paroj Banerjee, University College London
• Brijish Arya, Pehchan Foundation

This project was funded by: Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship (FT) 2022. Grant ID: FT210100422.