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100 questions to assemble a smart and liveable mumbai metropolitan region

Isaac Mathew
10 min readFeb 20, 2016

effective integration of physical, digital and human systems in the built environment to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens _ PD 8101:2014 Smart cities — Guide to the role of the planning and development process by British Standards Institute

India needs an ongoing conversation about its cities, SmartCities Mission is one such enabling environment. Irrespective of how much we gripe, the influx of technology into cities is inevitable. Cities are considered melting pots of cultures and promoted as testbeds of most new ideas. Therefore, it would be non-intuitive considering all this pressure to resist making it, well, smart.

Electricity (introduced after gas, before that it was oil) too faced some problems when it first came about, now we cannot do without it. This could be something similar. A difference with information (which is required for intelligence/ smartness), is that it is not at the moment considered a necessity for it to be compared on similar lines with, say health services, sanitation and housing. Hence an argument of its prerequisite existence in the urban fabric.

Whatever be the case, smartening of a city is a definite business opportunity therefore based on factors of influence, as service in various capacities, smart city concepts at various scales will find its way in. Since it's very much an early state in the process any conversation for or against it should be critically examined. In the broader context to summarily discuss an idea of the smart city within MMR, these series of questions are posed.

Of the list of 100 proposed cities, 4 of them lie within the Metropolitan Regional limits. Both the MMR Regional Plan and development plans for Greater Mumbai is being framed. Rather than another tasked future exercise, it is recommended that planning agencies should consider factoring in enabling requirements for a future smart urban area which is equitable, efficient and sustainable.

  1. Is the smart city an advertisement/ sales gimmick by technology companies?
  2. Who is in control in a smart city?
  3. What is the distinction between intelligence specific or design interventions in a smart city?
  4. What is the role of smartphone apps and its availability to smarten a city?
  5. What are the misconceptions of a smart city?
  6. Is the smart city safe?
  7. How can existing state information technology (IT) departments or other institutional policies be upgraded to subscribe to the smart tag?
  8. How can smart cities exchange information with each other to facilitate an amicable regional ecosystem?
  9. What is the ecological impact of smartening the city?
  10. What happens when systems which smarten a city goes offline?
  11. How does a smart city manage an urban disaster?
  12. What the various desired components which make the city smart?
  13. How is an implementation of the smart city initiative improving the development of the city for its future?
  14. Should technology products dictate urban planning decisions?
  15. With the availability of data about various aspects of the city will urban governance become non-intuitive?
  16. Is the smart city an open city?
  17. Does design or is it the policy which makes the city smart?
  18. Can nature play any role in smartening of a region?
  19. Who benefits in a smart city?
  20. With even basic services being difficult to implement what is the extent of groundwork required in a neighbourhood to receive its smart tag?
  21. What are the costs of implementing and maintaining a smart city?
  22. Will everyone in a smart city have access to an internet connection?
  23. Should smart cities be implemented in parts in select neighbourhoods or have an integrated system for an entire city in one go?
  24. Can open data in a smart city encourage equality, safety and sustainability principles among its citizens?
  25. Who gets to be a citizen of the city which is smart and who gets left out?
  26. Will the rich be smarter than the poor?
  27. Can equipment’s which smarten a city be designed to factor in responsible recycling of components?
  28. Will citizens in a smart city be happier than those who are not?
  29. Can smart city support disruptive behaviour?
  30. How is control in a smart city perceived?
  31. What is the role of stakeholders in a smart city?
  32. What does the do and do not’s do in a smart city?
  33. Can city officials act against information displayed in their control centres and be right in a smart city?
  34. Are smart city systems similar like any other urban governance product and we are overthinking it?
  35. Is the smart city a place for the Millennials to grow old in?
  36. Where are the data centres of a smart city?
  37. What level of security is required at sites which store city information?
  38. Between information about its citizens or workings of services which one has greater priority in a smart city?
  39. Are smart city services just a branding exercise for select companies selling their products?
  40. Is the future of a city using smart city services any better than those who don’t?
  41. Is the smart city as a concept a hindrance in making cities sustainable and liveable environments?
  42. Should cities wait, another 20years or so to upgrade their existing governance systems to subscribe to a smart status?
  43. What is a smart house in the city?
  44. Is it beneficial, cost-effective to live in an abode with a smart tag?
  45. Will smart cities create more enclaves of exclusion as implementation costs come at a price range not affordable to all?
  46. What kind of subsidies should be accommodated for inclusionary development in a smart city?
  47. Will roads be uncongested and water, the air clean in a smart city?
  48. Would you need permission or denied access to a smart city if you do not meet its system requirements?
  49. How free are you in a smart city?
  50. When planners and urban designers have failed to build sustainable city environments in the past how is it that technology managers validate the success of a city on systems?
  51. Does the smart city have a dark side?
  52. Can villages be made smart?
  53. Instead of cities doesn’t villages offer a better quality of life with minimal cost investments?
  54. Should city officials and various key citizen stakeholders be given training in available smart city systems to evaluate if they need to adopt them?
  55. What is the role of community participation in a smart city?
  56. How much of a city municipality budget be allocated for investing in smart city products and services?
  57. What are the changes in city governance such as acts, regulations, laws to need modification and revision to support any smart infrastructure or project?
  58. How is training an official in a smart city be different from a conventional one?
  59. Who are leaders in the smart city accountable to?
  60. Can data from open-source (when implemented) smart city platforms improve innovation?
  61. Are we going to share our private data to city systems to better improve city efficiency?
  62. Can smart city systems help the disabled navigate through urban environments without present/ current inconveniences?
  63. Should private agencies be allowed the use of public data gathered from public systems in smart cities?
  64. Can smart cities reduce our use/ dependence on technology?
  65. Should a city be completely dependent on technology to make it smart?
  66. Who are smart city technologies for and what purposes do they serve?
  67. Is public data a new form of public space in a smart city?
  68. Several information sets such as climatic data, satellite imagery are relatively open. Can we say we have used them optimally and are there untapped opportunities yet?
  69. Are there any requirements for making a city smart in a smart city? or alternatively can there be dumb people in a smart city?
  70. Will a smart city reduce our privacy?
  71. Short circuit cameras and other surveillance systems haven’t made the city any safer will connecting them all together in a smart city help?
  72. Is a smart city more vulnerable than a city?
  73. What are the monitoring systems available to conduct surveillance on individuals accessing smart city data?
  74. Which of the two is more practical, plans involving city-wide smart systems or incremental area-wise projects in the city?
  75. Should all public data collected by government and private agencies be made open and accessible by default in any city, smart or otherwise?
  76. What are some known problems with crowd-sourcing in the smart city?
  77. What are the various datasets which a city should start developing and made public to build smart city infrastructures on?
  78. Is there an identified history of using data and information which have made human settlements smart other than information technology?
  79. How can small business gain from locating themselves in a smart city?
  80. Can a smart city detect and prevent epidemics?
  81. What are the additional business opportunities available in a smart city which a conventional city is unable to provide?
  82. Is the smart city a contained environment with a hard edge or an encompassing canopy connected to a central core?
  83. Who are the main service providers in smart city technologies and what are subsequent costs of products they sell or implement?
  84. How robust are smart city systems that they can justify their implementation costs?
  85. If smart city a still a working prototype is investment costs viable as most of their benefits i.e. when/ if available considered worthy returns?
  86. Most of India is still very much rural, as an import will the smart city work for us?
  87. How can we conduct a realistic audit of our existing cities before we decide how and how much to invest in their upgradation?
  88. What are the various risks in publishing city datasets as generated from smart city systems or any other source submitting material onto a public repository?
  89. Should city councils help build developer communities within their jurisdictions to generate, curate and implement smart city services?
  90. Who should be held responsible when a smart system fails to perform?
  91. Will smart cities change the way we see and navigate the urban environment?
  92. Will more information than what is already available produce better results when a city progresses from normal to smart?
  93. Is the smart city as a concept still underdeveloped or does it need patronage from a city to model, iterate and lead by example?
  94. Plan vs project which one is better for a smart city?
  95. Is the smart city aspiration of the city similar to a city promoting itself as a tourist, hospitality or finance centre?
  96. What is the role of standards in forming and implementing the smart city?
  97. Does Mumbai really want to be smart?
  98. Is there any way to measure if a city is becoming smarter and to what extend?
  99. Can Mumbai or any of its neighbouring cities be ever smart?
  100. What are opportunities and barriers in the MMR for cities within it to be smart?
different cities, same neighbourhood

#note _ Making the city smart is located from the point of view of data, or so it seems. Data applied as an instrument to think and take decisions on cities. More data available, better it will be analysed and hence greater the intelligence out or so is the narrative.

These set of questions are purely stochastic in assemblage and roughly draws on from types of smart cities, the various roles of citizens, their initiatives, leadership roles in these sites and possible frameworks of auditing an aspiring smart city. A structure can be found in them but deliberately avoided.

Observing purely from an urban planning/ design perspective conventional city design theories are still catching up to the possibility of a city dependent on information since smart city as a concept hasn’t in essence, evolved from conservative domains of academia nor from planning practices but purely to meet marketing needs of software vendors.

A key point of distinction on the approach of design noted in traditional utopian urban models is that they have always been form-based or understood as such. These as a result considered more acceptable, irrespective of its various flaws. This is just the case from the design but several other knowledge streams to assemble a city of their own, based on agendas of their choosing.

What is the discourse on the city when it shifts knowledge streams say to sociology, economics and ecology?

Is the anticipation or concerns about the smart city stems from these other stakeholders being left out?

Can there be alternate platforms wherein all these ideas from different locations pooled to finally assemble a liveable city?

Cities in the course of its development already have incorporated several intelligent systems as part of its form. From train indicators to city guide books all these assist in smartening the urban environment. Data digitization assisted with the help of technology has facilitated an addition of alternatives and iterations of intelligent systems. These shouldn’t be recognised as the only claimants aspiring in making a smarter city, nor should other knowledge stakeholders assemble the city as composed of a sum total of their concerns.

references

Mumbai
Design Research
Projects
Urbanism
Smart Cities

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Isaac Mathew

Written by Isaac Mathew

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i think #architecture #art #planning #design #engineering

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