Smart Cities

In the contemporary world, the concept of smart cities has emerged as a beacon, of development and
innovation. Smart cities are aimed at tackling the various problems of modern life cities such as,
increasing population, increasing demands, traffic congestion etc. smart cities include many aspects in
its fold, some of which can be said as dashboards, technologically advanced cameras, efficient and
sustainable buildings etc. The same concepts have been described by many report such as :
“The praxis and politics of building urban dashboards” talks about emergence and proliferation of
urban Dublin dashboards (dashboards are used for real time monitoring and data collection,
facilitating decision making). The author focusses on three things related to urban dashboards which
are historical context(emergence of smart cities and urban dashboards), purpose and function of
dashboards, and critiques of such dashboards. The importance of critical data studies is also
mentioned in the source.
The concept of digital data has emerged over the past fifty years, it acknowledges the practice of
utilising the data to make effective data driven public policies. These concepts of urban dashboards
and smart cities have emerged from big marketing campaigns of large MNCs like IBM as a way to
create new markets for their products.
Smart cities are not only build by their high rise buildings and modern infrastructure but also by
accurate data collection and analysis, which are strategically utilised to enhance services, and develop
sustainably. Shift towards urban dashboards from the traditional methods of surveillance, has proved
to be effective in capturing more accurate data, and improving the visual analytics and dashboard
interfaces in organizing and interacting with data, enabling users to explore complex datasets without
specialized analytical skills.
However, critiques of urban dashboards challenge their neutrality and objectivity. They say that
dashboards are socially and politically biased and framed, which ultimately shapes our perception and
understanding of the city. It also contended that they oversimplify urban complexities, they reduce
city life to measurable, and countable indicators, this automatically overlooks historical, social, and
economic contexts.
In my opinion the author has well suggested that the demerits of these Dublin dashboards should be
critically looked upon. Their inability to highlight socio-technical complexity should be considered
and rethought upon. We need to develop this technology more taking into account all the present
loopholes as well.
“structure and the form of Australian city: prospects for improved urban planning” ,
comprehensively analysis the factors influencing urban development, specially in Australian cities.
Citizens’ choice for comfort is the main factor responsible for larger buildings and homes,
differentiated accommodation and private spaces. Our desire for freedom of movement has influenced
the transportation infrastructure and design of public spaces. Many different historical and economic
factors have led to the spatial organisation and density patterns of Australian cities.
Historical factors such as centralisation in colonial times led to concentrated urban centres,
development of transportation, led to radial suburban expansion and rapid urbanisation that took place
post WWII plus the immigration had influenced motor vehicle ownership. However, this lead to
inefficiencies. Newer and modern town planning efforts focused upon health and amenity, this aimed
to separate industrial and commercial activities from residential areas. Technological advancements
also helped in reshaping the urban landscapes by relocation industries and other such manufacturing
units. Decentralisation is aimed at distributing economic activities and services to suburban centres
but it constantly faced challenges.
Earlier, allotment size of land to people were based on the concept of self sufficiency, suburban
development facilitated domestic production, but technological developments have changed this
lifestyle. Australian urban form shares similarities with many different modern cities of the world.
Changes in modern societal trends and path dependency further poses challenges urban planning and
infrastructure. At the end, a call is made for planning institutions to increase the public engagement in
deciding the future of the cities.
In my view, the planning of cities should be adaptive and complexity of this process should be fully
addressed.
“Introduction to planning in NSW”, provides an overview of urban and regional planning, it
stresses upon the importance of balancing community needs and concerns regarding environment. It
lays down the reasons for regulating land use, planning process and main aspects of planning in New
South Wales(NSW). It explains the state environmental planning policies as a framework for
implementing state planning policy.
At the end it says about the ways in which goals of planning leads to creation of statutory rules .
The source “Smart cities”, defines smart cities as ones with pervasive computing and driven by
entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. smart cities are build on the trajectory of historical data
driven urban planning, use of technology to shoot up data production and analyse data for integrated
city management. Iot has a huge role to play in enhancing intelligent management through ICT, which
help in real time data collection and decision making. Benefits of smart cities include better
efficiency, economic boost, and targeted decision making. However, many criticism are also
mentioned such as increasing inequalities, less data security, and privacy concerns. Factors for
establishment of smart cities are infrastructure, rare earth materials, human labour and data security.
Examples like Dublin dashboards illustrate the importance of real time data. Land use planning is
highly important for building innovation districts, and to ensure diversity and affordability. There are
many modern emerging trends such as shift towards AI urbanism, which are further accelerated after
covid 19 these trends raise questions regarding human-non-human interactions in urban spaces.
In the very essence, I think while smart cities come up with many benefits, their implementation
requires consideration of equity, and balance between technology build up and urban spaces.
It can be seen that, two sources, “the praxis” and “smart cities” both talk about the importance of data
collection and Dublin dashboards being a new age method to collect reliable real time data. All the
sources talk about data driven advancement, and in my view it is very important to plan the
development of cities according to the regional indicators rather than moving ahead randomly. Smart
cities is an emerging concept, and it is also one of our sustainable goals (SDG 11), but every aspect
such as historical, social, economical etc should be well considered.
In the relentless pursuit of progress, let our cities be not just smart, but truly wise – fostering
harmony between humanity, technology, and the environment for generations yet to come.
References:
1. Kitchin, R., Maulsen, S., & McArdle, G. (2016). The praxis and politics of building urban
dashboards. Geoforum.
2. Troy, P. (2004). The Structure and Form of the Australian City: Prospects for Improved
Urban Planning.
3. Gilbert, C. (2024). Introduction to Planning in NSW.
4. Maalsen, S. (2024). Smart Cities.

Smart Cities

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In the contemporary world, the concept of smart cities has emerged as a beacon, of development and

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