Smart Cities Mission: Policy Roadmap from Vision to Reality

The Smart Cities Mission is one of the most ambitious flagship programmes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Never before in the history of free India has a more ambitious initiative been embarked upon. None of the other programmes like Digital India, Swachh Bharat, Namami Gange, Make in India, Skill India or the Jan Dhan Yojana parallel its scale. In fact, all the aforementioned initiatives would be essential plug-ins to the Smart Cities Mission. The Mission cannot succeed without the success of these programmes. This is for the simple reason that policies are made for the citizens who reside in urban, semi-urban and rural areas. If one looks at the empirical evidence on urbanisation trends and future projections, the rate of urbanisation is only going up, though one may disagree with the velocity of it. But that does not go to suggest that the Smart Cities Mission is not relevant to rural areas. The magnitude of the ambition of the Smart Cities Mission cannot be gauged from the standpoint of the investment that it shall attract or the numerical economic value that the grand opportunity presents, though numerous estimates going into trillions of dollars – laid out by credible, top-tier consulting firms – do exist. Even as the true figure might lie in the vicinity of the numbers being bandied about, I do not think they do justice to the spirit of Smart Cities. Too much ink is being wasted in cooking up those numbers, even as policymakers lack a cogent, credible and competent definition of Smart Cities. I am not suggesting those numbers are wrong. In fact, higher investments are desirable, even as other things remain equal. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves without a working definition of Smart Cities, which does not bode well for a mission of this complexity. From a general policy perspective, in order to succeed, the Smart Cities Mission will need to be a truly collaborative effort in the best spirit of cooperative federalism whereby the policy formulation process will see close functioning of the Centre and the states. Further, the mission’s implementation will necessarily lie with the states, in their cities and municipalities, given the Mission’s transformational impact on the economy, tourism, social fabric, urban development standards and the general way of life. It may be comparable to other historic transformational policy initiatives such as the Green Revolution, the Electricity Act of 2003 and the telecom revolution kick-started by the New Telecom Policy of 1999 – each under the Atal Behari Vajpayee government – or the impact of the Delhi Metro, which too was developed under the leadership of the then Prime Minister Vajpayee. Each of these landmark initiatives, though, pale in comparison to what is being envisaged under the Smart Cities Mission. Its size and scale, as envisioned by the Prime Minister, shall truly be all-pervading but only if driven by a core public purpose, in order to accomplish its transformational potential within a reasonable time frame. Core Purpose So, what shall be the core public purpose of the Smart Cities Mission? It is to make life significantly more sustainable for people living in cities by transforming the way they live and work. This instantly and essentially means a lower urban carbon footprint, far better livelihood propositions and a quantum leap in the quality of life as measured by enhanced resilience both against natural calamities and routine security challenges. None of the above is possible without a paradigm shift in the discourse on energy generation and consumption; waste management; water and sanitation; the level of technological engagement in public services; developing core economic strength in delivering these technological advancements in products and services in India; and financial inclusion. Cities of the future would have to create enough empowering and enabling financial infrastructure and incentive for the have-nots to participate in sustainable development as an asset rather than being seen and treated as a liability. This would essentially mean that all the government’s flagship mentioned earlier need to succeed for the Smart Cities Mission to succeed. Therefore – whether intended by the Prime Minister or not – all the flagship initiatives fit into each other perfectly, without any contradictions, cross-purposes or perpendicular discourses. In other words, the thought-process integration is seamless, absolute and brilliant. Core Objective Function The core objective function of the Smart Cities Mission will be to create a policy and regulatory design that dynamically sets nation-wide standards on urban living. The utopian vision of such a regulatory mechanism design would essentially have to be integrated, interactive, intelligent, responsive, self-learning, self-corrective and self-adjusting based on the evolving landscape of demographics and culture, on the one hand, and the technological discourse on the other. The idea of Smart Cities does not necessitate the creation of Greenfield cities but can be retrofitted into the existing metros and cities to make them smarter. Definitional Framework There are a handful of definitions of Smart Cities that have already been given. There is even an ISO 37120:2014 standard that has been evolved to track the various parameters that would be necessary in building smart cities. However, it is important to devise our own definition that can speak to our own special needs, while doing justice to the smorgasbord of flagship programmes that would be seamlessly integrated with the idea of Smart Cities. What are some of the elements that the definition must embody? Sustainable This has to be the bed rock of any policy. Specific to the Smart Cities Mission, sustainability would inform an economic, industrial, technological, social, cultural structure that distributes the fruits of economic development in an open, transparent and inclusive system that allows for the freedom of contributing to the economic and cultural life of the city and harnessing the fruits of such contribution. It might be measurable by a rise in median incomes. Multi-Axial Architecture Smart Cities are not only about technology but, more importantly, about the people that ultimately reside in these cities. The idea of Smart Cities will revolve around multiple axes. Briefly, these would include urban design, energy, water, waste, transportation, information technology, security and resilience. A secondary, yet now less significant, set of components would be livelihood, health, education, food, art and culture. The designing of Smart Cities would essentially build a national, regional, city-centric architecture that would develop standards for each of these aspects in a Multi-axial architecture. Regenerative Transformation Smart Cities need to be positively transformational for the lives of citizens. The Mission will create a series of numerous incremental steps towards a transformational architecture for public goods and services to be delivered and the administration, regulation and funding of the same. This is required for the scale of investment that would be warranted. Also, the transformational impact has to be based on the principle of a closed carbon loop cycle, in order to achieve a low carbon impact future. For example, the use of latest technological advancements in waste to energy such as Integrated Plasma Gasification in Combined Cycle would need to be encouraged and made the mainstay, instead of the current technologies that are primitive, to take the waste management discourse to a significant new level. Cultural Integration A Smart City will also be a vibrant art, culture and heritage hub as manifest in its people. The idea of open spaces, theaters, art-houses and galleries is a quintessential part of a Smart City. Technological Integration Sustainable and digital technologies would play a leadership role in ensuring that the policy mechanism design remains robust and is able to constantly adjust to new demands and shifts in society and technology as well as the political and geo-strategic evolution of India as a nation state. For instance, Smart Grids would be a necessity to attain a low carbon future of the urban spaces if the proliferation of renewable energy generation has to be integrated without grid disruptions. The digital aspect would essentially mean big data-driven decision making. Even as talking about big data at length is essentially outside the scope of this article, it must be said that the data handling rule should be transparent and the open access of data and restriction on its public dissemination should be an exception only in very select strategic cases. Economic and Skill Development Finally, all talk about Smart Cities would leave the teeming masses completely unimpressed if there is nothing in it for them. So, Smart Cities would have to intelligently integrate industrial distribution around cities so that the city can develop as a self-contained macrocosm of livelihood. A direct corollary of this economic development would mean the immediate requirement for skills that would be paid for out of the economic development achieved. The Skill India flagship initiative would have to be integrated by policymakers into the Smart Cities Mission. So, if we finally integrate all the aforementioned elements, we also get an eponymous acronym that stands as a definition for ‘SMAART CITIES’, as developed and copyrighted by the Blue Earth Enterprise: Sustainable Multi-Axial Architecture for Regenerative Transformation, Cultural Integration, Economic and Skill development. It must be remembered that the escape velocity of travelling from the current undesirable state of our cities to a Utopian, transformed state would necessarily be achieved by thrusts from four engines, namely, technological breakthrough; positive policy framework – enabling environment; community engagement; and enthusiastic public funding. It must also be understood that while the low carbon future imperatives are driven by climate change, which is for real, the reasons for Smart Cities go far beyond it should be held as an ideal in itself, because a significantly better quality of city life is a cause worth fighting for.