Can the Smart City Allure Meet the Challenges of Indian Urbanization?

The core argument of this chapter is that the Smart Cities Mission appears to present a disconnect between the actually existing city development and urbanization, and its primary goal of creating wealth by embedding technology in the built environment without first addressing the basic city problems is flawed. This chapter comprehensively presents the three challenges of urbanization facing Indian cities. These are the challenges of infrastructure with a specific focus on sanitation, the challenges of environment, and the challenges of governance. Separately, these challenges have been discussed but this is the first attempt when urban development challenges are being discussed in the context of the Smart Cities Mission. The chapter further explores smart cities, as conceived and currently being built by the Indian and global corporate builders, could face up to the challenges presented by the Indian urbanization.