Smart Cities Unbundled

Smart Cities Unbundled describes how the Smart Cities Mission has reconceptualized and extended the Smart City model in ways that makes it relevant and useful for most of India's major cities, as well as for many cities worldwide. The book prescribes a 'smart' Indian approach to urban development that veers away from a narrow technicist focus to a broader, more inclusive and flexible conceptualization of a Smart City. This fresh approach fully recognizes the fundamental need to make people part of policy formulation and partners in implementation, while still integrating the use of advanced technology and urban informatics to improve the technical efficiency of essential public services. As such, it describes an adaptive framework that recognizes differing local circumstances, and as such, will assist urban development professionals in India and elsewhere to adapt the application of smart city strategies to their unique contexts. Clearly, this book will be useful for practitioners and students, both in India and abroad. As a text, Smart Cities Unbundled can assist urban development practitioners and students to understand the value of integrating human-scale planning with advanced sensor-based urban informatics using artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The work is grounded in western theories and concepts of smart cities, and provides insight to the application of sustainable and inclusive development, and how compact area development can create a replicable model that can serve as a 'lighthouse” to other aspiring areas and cities. In addition, the book is strongly focused on Indian urban development practices and ideas, as reflected in the discussion of the 'loose fit, light touch' framework, special purpose vehicles and the Bespoke method of capacity building. These will be of interest to Indians as well as non-Indians interested in Indian development approaches.

As populations have continued to grow and expand, many people have made their homes in cities around the globe. With this increase in city living, it is becoming vital to create intelligent urban environments that efficiently support this growth and simultaneously provide friendly and progressive environments to both businesses and citizens alike. Smart Cities and Smart Spaces: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an innovative reference source that discusses social, economic, and environmental issues surrounding the evolution of smart cities. Highlighting a range of topics such as smart destinations, urban planning, and intelligent communities, this multi-volume book is designed for engineers, architects, facility managers, policymakers, academicians, and researchers interested in expanding their knowledge on the emerging trends and topics involving smart cities.

"Smart cities" use surveillance, big data processing and interactive technologies to reshape urban life. Transit riders can see the bus coming on a map on their phones. Cities can measure and analyze the garbage collected from every household. Businesses can track individuals' movements and precisely target advertisements. Google's failed Sidewalk Labs proposal in Toronto, which drew sharp criticism over surveillance and privacy concerns, is just one of the many smart city projects which have been proposed or are underway in Canada. Iqaluit, Edmonton, Guelph, Montreal, Toronto and other cities and towns are all grappling with how to use these technologies. Some cities have quickly partnered with digital giants like Uber, Bell and IBM. Others have kept their distance. Big tech companies are hard at work recruiting customers and shaping – sometimes making – public policy on data collection and privacy. Smart Cities for Canada: Promise and Perils is the first book on smart cities in Canada. In this collection, experts from across the country investigate what this new approach means for the problems cities face, and expose the larger issues about urban planning and democracy raised by smart city technology. This is a valuable, timely, independent‐minded book for Canadians.

Death and Life of Nature in Asian Cities explores the encounter between two processes that are unfolding in diverse patterns across Asia—the rapid urbanization of Asia across big cities, smaller towns, and the newest urban concentrations; and the contentious debates and novel schemes by which nature is figured and emplaced in cities and their conurbations. Contemporary Asian cities displace nature by causing its death and withering, but also embrace it through acts of renewal and the pursuit of sustainability. Contributors in this volume gather case studies from across Asia to address projects of urban greening and reimagining nature in urban life. The book illustrates how the intersection of urban growth and urban nature is a place rich with fresh ideas about urban planning, governance, and social life. This book illuminates a continuing process of discovery and regeneration through which urban natures may well be moving from taken-for-granted infrastructures to more consciously experienced sites of interplay between non-human life and materials, and daily human life experiences. Debates and efforts to recover nature in the city provoke moral and ethical evaluations of the human ecology of city life, and direct ecologies of urbanism into new avenues like aesthetics, care, perception, and stewardship. “This fascinating collection of essays brings together a series of cutting-edge insights into Asian cities caught in the maelstrom of global environmental change. A particular strength of this book is its commitment to forms of interdisciplinary dialogue and conceptual engagement that unsettle existing geographies of knowledge.” —Matthew Gandy, University of Cambridge; author of Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space “This impressive collection on urban ecologies moves beyond the anthropocentric city to expand our understanding of cities as multispecies spaces of active collaboration, decay, and regeneration, offering new possibilities for the flourishing of urban life—both human and non-human—and the design of more just and sustainable cities for all.” —Christina Schwenkel, University of California, Riverside; author of Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam

This book discusses how smart cities strive to deploy and interconnect infrastructures and services to guarantee that authorities and citizens have access to reliable and global customized services. The book addresses the wide range of topics present in the design, development and running of smart cities, ranging from big data management, Internet of Things, and sustainable urban planning. The authors cover - from concept to practice – both the technical aspects of smart cities enabled primarily by the Internet of Things and the socio-economic motivations and impacts of smart city development. The reader will find smart city deployment motivations, technological enablers and solutions, as well as state of the art cases of smart city implementations and services. · Provides a single compendium of the technological, political, and social aspects of smart cities; · Discusses how the successful deployment of smart Cities requires a unified infrastructure to support the diverse set of applications that can be used towards urban development; · Addresses design, development and running of smart cities, including big data management and Internet of Things applications.

World Congress on Disaster Management (WCDM) brings researchers, policy makers and practitioners from around the world in the same platform to discuss various challenging issues of disaster risk management, enhance understanding of risks and advance actions for reducing risks and building resilience to disasters. The fifth WCDM deliberates on three critical issues that pose the most serious challenges as well as hold the best possible promise of building resilience to disasters. These are Technology, Finance, and Capacity. WCDM has emerged as the largest global conference on disaster management outside the UN system. The fifth WCDM was attended by more than 2500 scientists, professionals, policy makers, practitioners all around the world despite the prevalence of pandemic.

This book comprises speeches delivered by the Honourable Vice President of India Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu since his assumption of office as the 13thVice President of India on the 11thof August 2017.The Vice President has, during the last one year, addressed more than 400 meetings covering a wide range of audiences on a variety of topics ranging from Education to National Security and from Agriculture and Culture to Science and Technology. He has addressed a number of convocations and has delivered keynote addresses and memorial lectures in all the States and Union Territories of our country.The book contains 92 speeches and is categorized into six broad sections - ‘Functioning of Legislatures’, ‘Nation and Nationalism’, ‘Polity and Governance’, ‘Economic Development’, ‘Media’ and ‘India and the World’.The speeches included in this volume provide an insight into the Vice President’s perspective and vision on a wide range of issues confronting the nation. They have been edited and compiled in a way that ensures stylistic continuity, flow, and ease of reading. Hence they deviate slightly from the version that was delivered.We hope that this collection of speeches delivered between September 2017 and August 2018 will make an interesting read and will act as an important source of reference and record.