Smart Cities for Sustainable Development
What makes a city smart—and whose lives does it improve? Smart Cities for Sustainable Development (Springer, 2022) brings this question into focus through the many realities that shape urban life: the neighbourhoods people inhabit, the services they can access, the public spaces they share, and the environments on which their futures depend.
The book emerged from a collaboration that endured the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad, and ActionAid Association had planned an International Conference on “Making Cities Smart and Sustainable” for 20–22 February 2020. As the pandemic prevented the conference from proceeding despite advanced preparations, the organisers reimagined a virtual gathering. Joined by additional collaborators, including Queensland University of Technology and the Urban Synergies Group, Australia, they convened Urban Action School and Thinkers Campus on 15–16 September 2020. This volume carries that exchange forward.
Organised into four parts, the collection moves from ideas about the shape and growth of cities to the lived experiences and practical challenges of urban transformation. The first part examines the conceptual foundations of smart cities, community participation and emerging approaches to planning and governance. The second brings environmental sustainability, deprived urban communities, education, health and women’s experiences of public space into the discussion. The third explores economic and technological questions, while the fourth grounds these debates in Indian case studies.
Across its chapters, digital governance, geospatial technologies and new approaches to organising cities sit alongside concerns as immediate as neighbourhood heat, access to water and women’s fear of violence. Studies of urban heat in Varanasi, health and climate resilience in Surat, and land-use change in Kalimpong give these concerns a tangible setting. Together, the contributions reveal how closely questions of infrastructure and innovation are bound to those of dignity, belonging and ecological well-being.
For researchers, practitioners, policymakers and community advocates, the book offers both analytical tools and reasons to question familiar assumptions about urban progress. Its most compelling invitation is to judge the promise of a smart city through the everyday lives of its residents: their ability to move safely, access essential services, participate in decisions and imagine a secure future in the place they call home.
