Smart City: How Do We Understand?

Abstract

 Abstract

A smart city is a rising and multidisciplinary domain. It has been defined as effective use of

information and communication technologies (ITCs) which enhance urban life in terms of

quality of life, governance, institution, economy and mobility. A smart city is an urban region

which is highly advanced in terms of infrastructure, real estate, communication and market

visibility. In smart city, information technology is the main infrastructure and the source for

providing essential services to residents. In the year 2015, India launched the program of

smart cities which is urban lead economic growth. Many argue that smart cities bring positive

change in social and economic life by adopting ITCs in planning and execution. In the last

recent year, India introduced many programs to transform the cities and took many initiatives

to provide better services to urban residents, like, e-governance has been a major step taken.

Despite so many efforts, Indian cities face a lot of crisis such as financial, technological as

well as implementing governance. Smart cities comprised of three essential components viz.

technology, people and institution. There is no significant reference of institution and people

in order to build smart cities; their main focus is on technological driven method, because

technology is considered as a crucial factor for transforming cities into smart. It is good to

use technology for fast solution of problem, but again question arises here that where we

locate technology and at what level and how we consider smart city? The neoliberal pushes

for smart cities in advance form of capitalist system. This neoliberal system shows how

resources have been exploited by a small group of big companies and how a large

organization becomes larger and small ones become smaller. In smart cities, technologies are

enforced into communities without accessing their fundamental needs. On the other side, it

may be said that smart cities are a modern form of imperialism.

Keywords: Neoliberal, smart city, technology

Cite this Article

Uttam Singh. Smart City: How do We

Understand? Current Trends in

Information Technology. 2017; 7(2):

23–28p.