I. SMART GROWTH TRENDS
From the last section, it is evident that why generalization of the concept can be harmful. The variation in the growth and the development style of a city plays a vital role in coining this term specifically for that place. The conditions that triggers the modifications in the definition can be social, economic, cultural, governmental, environmental, geographical or historical aspects. Though the cities have their own direction or working style towards smartness, the countries and continents can be clubbed and generalized on the basis of their main sectoral focus of performance for the smart label. All the continents have their own way of working towards smartness. Where American cities are focussing on energy efficiency and green development, Europe is using technology to enhance the infrastructure, Middle East is trying to create smart cities from scratch including all the key aspects of smartness and the Asian cities are following other cities to buck-up with the infrastructure and services and current issues. Hence, all the cities are planning using different aspects and attributes to make their city smarter. The article‘Smart cities of the future’ written by M. Batty, -suggests few goals for the smart city like a new understanding of urban problems; effective and feasible ways to coordinate urban technologies; models and methods for using urban data across spatial and temporal scales; developing new technologies for communication and dissemination; new forms of urban governance and organization; defining critical problems relating to cities, transport, and energy, and lastly, risk, uncertainty and hazard in the smart city. All these theories question the role of urbanism. How urban design and planning is helping the cities to be smarter. Or how urban development or urbanism have different goals compared to the smart city goals? It seems that there are a lot of overlaps. There are lot many newly derived terminologies like urban coding, new urbanism, pattern language, space syntax theory etc. which confirms that the planning sector have similar goals as the concept
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Master Thesis | Alankrita Sarkar
of smart cities. All the sectors, institutions, theories and concepts are trying to provide a better lifestyle for the people. Thus, they have alike goals in mind. It is just the inclusion of technology and the citizen centric methods which separates the concept of smart cities from others. In this section we put more light on the urbanisation of Asian countries as my location of interest are Indian cities. Most of the cities in Asian countries are struggling with major problems of pollution, traffic congestion, growing and uncontrollable population, lack of services, poor environment etc. And need not to mention the economic dynamism influences a lot while taking decisions for a better environment of a liveable city. The motive behind the concept of smart cities in Asian countries are to create a balance between the economic growth and generating liveable spaces. (Thuzar n.d.) Urbanization is not fulfilling or catering the basic needs of the residents. Highly growing population is reducing the chances of adequate employment, literacy, shelter, security, infrastructure and services to the urban as well as rural population. The strategies the government or the developers using in Asia are progressing the cities as engines of development, inclusive urban development, connecting the cities with the environment, urban and regional connectivity, governance and decentralization.(ISEAS 2010) Thus, smart cities in Asian countries have more connection to the urban development and governmental strategies and policies to create a liveable environment, rather than focusing on the ICT sector. Based on the following map and the focus elements of smartness, the objectives of the continents are quite clear. The six universal key dimensions explained in Chapter 3 are useful to categorise the continents in terms of prominent smart interventions. This would help to recognize the differences in the continent focus and specific city focus (explained in next section).