INCEPTION OF AN INTERACTIVE HABITABLE BIOSPHERE
The reality/dream of our SMART CITY
Humans are unpredictable, we all know how things keep inclined towards getting worse in urban scenarios. We have always witnessed a chaos between the upcoming townships. Information is so dynamic that even surveys have stopped helping us. May it be the best planned cities or the ones evolved by on their own, the case is same. Great Architect Le-Corbusier must not have imagined the situations of these satellite towns(extending to Panchkula, Mohali etc.) near Chandigarh as they are today. There is decay of centre and despoiling of suburbs. Lack of housing and transportation is just another aspect. Still, there are number of people who want to jump into this urban chaos. They must be looking forward to a holistic life, but, sometimes end up with their cattle in the urban sprawl. Since the very prehistoric origins of mankind, many cities have been built and vanished. It cannot be believed that the reason for their disappearance is the is the non-holistic planning or the attacks they witnessed. They might have solved the very purpose of their existence and very few of them are still existing as ruins. We cannot say that settlements like Catalhuyuk were unsustainable because they do not exist today. Maybe because sustainability is not something which lasts for long. Anything that solves the purpose within the scenario it exits is sustainable, even if it lives for a shorter period of time. Twenty years ago we wanted our cities to be metro, now we want our cities to be smart. What we have always looked forward to is ‘control over the chaos’. As per the survey of Rockefeller Foundation, by year 2050, 75% of world population will live in the cities. The cost of urban disasters in 2011 alone was estimated at over $380 billion. Isn’t this the time for cities to act?
The statement of president Lydon B Jhonson goes: ‘Our societies will never be great, until our cities are great’. Now a days, it is a fact that more holistic living is witnessed in more remote areas covering many aspects. One may contradict this and yes, it is contradictory, but again it matters is the scope we peep into. Thus this paper is a journey of collection of facts and their manipulations in many direction so as to understand ‘Holistic Living’. It will include all the aspects regarding involvement of ICT(Internet and Communication Technology) into the core of city framework.
Open lands are vanishing and landmarks are being violated. Urban crisis exists in most parts of the civilized world. As per the research done for the film ‘Threads of Sustainability’, completed three years before, The feeling if frustration is so overwhelming, that there are some looking forward to abandon the city altogether(looking into Indian metro scenarios). The common bond, one to eek out the living and desire to interact socially make these people stay together. The relentless quest for greener pastures force them to leave their roots and home. The perception of progress being synonymous with the city is attracting. Ultimately finding themselves in the trap of Inadequate shelter, encroachments, inflation etc. Injection of diversity and variety in meaningful pattern is required. Out of which ICT covers just a small part. The most important symbol of development is ‘environmental degradation’. Droughts, Famines, Floods, soil erosion are the regular features of wanton deforestation. Industrial affluents contaminate, pollutants, poison in the air, leading to numerous diseases and slow deaths. Grim statistics confirm that deforestation links to global warming. All symptoms of environmental crises, which is already upon us. It’s not just a thing to be vaguely concerned about, it is a cry for survival. Stephen Hawking, in the recent conference, at Sydney Opera House, mentioned that humans should stop looking towards their feet, now we, need to look up to the stars, as we do not have even 1000 years more of survival on this planet, the planet, which gave birth and environment to our organism. In Delhi alone, still, a large part of population still resides in shanties, amounting to about 4000 hectare. It’s like a variable snowball, increasing in size waiting for a crash. The failure of municipal bodies and government agencies is leading to public resentment and consequently to the breaking down of order. Problems keep outpacing any solution. Surely it is time for the government to admit its limitation and face up the reality of the situation. Developing sustainable strategies for developing and developed nations requires the reexamination of frameworks of modern day city as well as its tendons. Prior to the modernist movement, the relationship between built form and natural environs was largely visible.
Technologies appropriate at the national level must be separated from the ones appropriate for the local consumption. From macro to micro enterprise, a breakdown is required. They must respond to the local environs, resource and economic needs.
ABSTRACT
Raising public awareness for environmental and sustainability issues is indispensable. For comprehensive and appropriate development issues, it is essential to educate the government, public, social and technical institutions and business groups. It is essential that future generations are constantly made aware of such issues in their decision making process. Just as an individual understands the implications of his/her daily financial decisions, similarly, he/she should be cognizant of his social and environmental implications , his actions. By the end of this paper, we will be using ICT, in this limited but vast scope, and disregard many other aspects included in term ‘Smart City’. Just two problems were observed in the city development and running system which can be resolved through ICT, the first is the addressing of situations to the public, institutions. There is no feedback of research and development ‘by’ and ‘to’ the intuitions. The system remains static to discerning coterie to advocate the necessary change. Any change may further involve the cyclic link which can be pushed through the ICT so appropriate development methods become a mainstream. The other problem is that the research agencies, institutions, other organizations etc address each issue individually and in a singular way. Coordination and cross sectoral work between these agencies may also be pushed through ICT. Putting just this part of ICT will redefine ‘Smart City’ to ‘Smart, Independent, Empowered, and Informed City’. We will just generate graphs and put them forcefully in front of everyone. But not snatch away the freedom(explained further). This paper will also specify the limits, and explains, the ways ICT can be harmful if used more than this scope. ICT is good enough to gather information, but surely it will be hazardous, if it used this information to take further actions(current smart city concept). We can’t let ICT control our city systems.
Development, from the other side, has not just led to attaching of just a mobile phone to a person, but also a bottle of packed water in hands, major reason for osteoporosis and cardio vascular diseases. The best solutions are sometimes so simple, that they get disregarded due to their simplicity.
Chief Seattle, in 1984, said that we haven’t inherited earth from our forefathers, but borrowed it from our children.
Why make it just one thing in the internet of things?
SMART CITY
The urban development ministry has identified almost all the places where NDA’s 100 smart cities will come up. Prime minister’s vision is taking shape. It is being tried out to create urban settlements(100 initially) that exploit technology to offer more structured and hospitable living conditions to the residents. ICT forms the backbone of these cities and is common platform to address all the problems. We can respond to emergencies faster. Resources will be streamlined through technology, better energy systems and calculations, we still do not know anything about the energy resources we will be using. Still lot is there, integrated bus and rapid train transit corridors, pod-cars to travel. Government plans to build these 100 cities with the allocation of Rs. 7,060 crores to this end in the budget 2014-15. Even building approval systems will so intelligent, that they will approve construction automatically with computer drawings. This is the vision we have for intelligent agricultural nation.
Smart environment, computers must clean the water reservoirs. Smart business, a remote household weaver is no more required as we will be able to buy cheap carpets from china directly,. Smart living, computer will generate food. Smart Education, kids and teachers will sign-in and sign-out. Smart Citizen/Community, yes, you can surely have a online girlfriend. Smart Government, now all offices have led screens. Smart Infrastructure, addition of data cables to building services, all constructions approved with AutoDSR. Smart utility, computers will reduce emissions. Smart mobility, everyone is allowed to follow only the path they have been directed into, otherwise, a smart system will take automatic ‘challan’. Smart Citizen, the human-like organic being/natural robot.
Why not put up robots on earth and play computer games?
The very first phase of DMIC, covers 7 cities from Dadri, near Delhi to JN port, Mumbai. In these seven cities, the coverage of land given to just Resorts is 28% of total. Then 19% to industrial, 9% to entertainment, 8% to solar parks, 5% to high access corridor. On the lower 3% to infrastructure, same to IT park, and forest. On the minimal 1% is dedicated to agriculture. It seems to be a smart approach which is senseless for agricultural nation like ours. Criticism on Wikipedia mentions: ‘A bias in strategic interest may lead to ignoring alternative avenues of promising urban development’.
SMART
Google Definition 1: (of a person) clean, tidy and well dressed
Google Definition 2: having or showing a quick witted intelligence.
Mentions of this word have been seen much before from 1800s. But, it is a great and recent realization. Or maybe a promoting strategy.
In the terms of ‘Smart City’ there are thousands of definitions, characteristics and criticisms varying with every other person.
CITY
We all have lived and seen cities closely. We have witnessed a system that works here. There is a possibility that these systems are not working effectively in specific-certain conditions. But, if we look into the remote areas, even with high population densities around the world, no requirement of ICT infrastructure is seen. Aren’t they livable places? City is a place where we interact with one another and seek for containment. The standard ‘non-smart’ systems of city works with the complexity that has been generated over the time. Why are we looking forward to add-in the complexity that has also been developed over time and developing? What’s wrong here?
PEEPING INTO SMART CITY
If we look into Indian subcontinent, none of the cities have been called as ‘smart’ in the present scenario. Lavasa in Maharashtra have been foreseen as one(still under construction) but it is not able to meet various sustainable and socio-economic parameters. Another one we look into is GIFT(Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) in Gujarat. It is looking forward to potential in ‘financial services sector’ and aims to employ over 4 million people. Planners claim that it will represent around 5% of the GDP with a estimated market capitalization of over US$ 200 billion. It claims to offer distinct kinds of opportunities across several product markets. Opportunity have been looked forward in the strong urbanization trends but it has stifled with problem of infrastructure bottlenecks, crumbling urban infrastructure. The sectors considered for growth here are Financial services, IT/ITES, BPO/KPO. It will involve proactive urban governance. Looking into the global benchmarking, comparing it to Paris(La Defense), Tokyo(Shinjuku), London(Dockyards), Pudong(Lujiazui) it is observed that it land area is almost 2.5 times, construction scale is 4.5 times.
City services are already been connected through a underground RCC (400mm walled) trench. this 7.7m X 6.3m wide trench. This run is going to cover the total 886 acres of land. It will include all the power cables, ICT cables, control cables, raw/STP/fire water pipelines, gas connections etc. All these are put together into one running unit. The separations done are only for ‘Domestic Tariff Areas(DTA)’ and SEZ which in turn are connected through feeders/utility crossing. The collapse, even in one specific area of this trunk may bring down whole city systems thus creating a hazard. High speed fiber network, Diverse local and international connectivity, pervasive wireless and mobile networks may not be of any use just after another minute. The total of 100 buildings including schools and hospitals are being constructed with height reaching above 350mts on a single go. Although, we have seen that the best city-run have only been witnessed where the cities have developed over the time in tandem to the social, cultural and historic ideologies. Here we might blame AutoDSR for improper function of the built environment.
From number of cases seen around, smart city initiatives and design are based on a model with pushes towards sustainability but is non interactive with the rapid urbanization happening. Looking into the Indian subcontinent, the population explosion is massive. Combining the population of China and India, is almost equal to the population of rest of the world. A proper criteria, as adopted by Norman Foster for the development of Masdar, Abu Dhabi is supposed to be formulated which involves a coordination between Environment, Design science research and knowledge base. Design science research adopts requirements from the policy as seen under the environment and the design cycle runs within the framework construction and evaluation. All the knowledge generated in this process is put forward to the knowledge base where conceptualization and analysis is run. Further, grounding is adopted back from knowledge base into design research. The field evaluation from here is taken back again to the environment where stakeholders knowledge needs exist. In few of the existing townships, management of singular resources have worked well. Interaction of resources is required unless they aren’t reacting by themselves on the grounds of received knowledge.
THE URBAN EFFECT
With the population of more than 1.2 billion, India is projected to be the world’s most populous country by 2025. By 2050, it is estimated that India’s urban population will constitute nearly half of country’s total population, straining at an already stressed infrastructure. In 20 years, India’s cities will have to accommodate250 million to 300 million more people than they do today. That’s equivalent to 11 new Delhis. Of the 1.4 billion of people of the world who do not have access to electricity, India accounts for over 300 million. Piped water supply reaches only 74% of urban households. No Indian city has piped water 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 4-5 hours of supply is average. Despite increased investments in infrastructure, an estimated $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements will be required to meet the country’s resource needs over the next 5 years. By 2015, India is expected to become the world’ third largest emitter of carbon-di-oxide-it ranked fifth in 2005. The number of private vehicles in India is expected to grow more than 3 times by 2021. India has witnessed major urbanization in recent times, with an estimated 30 people leaving rural India for urban areas every minute during the next 20 years. At this rate, the country will need some 500 new cities in the next two decades. Maybe its chaos over control. What we have missed out here is our long term want as a race. What we are being left out with, are the huge concrete flyovers.
To overcome the urban decay, the ‘new town’ concept came up a long time ago, to protect big metropolitan cities(so that population aggregation at one place could be arrested and more balanced distribution could be achieved). Trials were made to generate new communities while parent metropolis remains healthy and survive longer. Regional development became a new area of interest and practice. Now a days, existing cities have huge extensions. Examples like Rohini, Dwarka, Narela as parts of extended Delhi, Navi Mumbai to Mumbai, Salt lake city to Kolkata, Yelhanka and Kengeri to Bangalore. Noida, Greater Noida, Manser are all such developments. All these extended settlements doesn’t seem to be inclusive to their prime city . All the social requirements are not fulfilled even when procurement of large tracts of land are already been done. Most states in India today have township policies. State governments, instead of themselves developing the land, have now started encouraging the private real estate sector to come in and develop towns. These are the areas where conflict is arriving. The basic motive of profit makes the realization of social objective secondary. Unfortunately, most of the private sector real estate initiatives have ended up in developments, which are too small, fragmented in odd shapes and sizes and mostly catering to the very high income population and far from inclusive.
The need of the hour is to look into the regional scenarios as we create a biosphere where humans interact with the nature. All the factors like improving city infrastructure, enhancement and improving quality of life can be achieved if we closely relate biosphere to a city. Estimated one million people worldwide are moving into cities. Global urban population will double by 2050 to 6.4 billion (70% of total world population by then). 
Left: Diagram representing how a integration of biosphere can be done with the smart cities. The resources may also be exchanged.
The significant barriers that hamper India’s struggle in the development of urban infrastructure include complex leadership structures, land valuation challenges, capability gaps, funding short falls etc. These are all the factors resisting the dramatic economic growth. The current problems of developing good infrastructure, soil waste disposal, flood management, storm water and sewage system etc are major parts of urban decay, thus, deteriorating quality of life for many of its citizens. This sweeping wave of urbanization across the whole country looks like an opportunity but it is one of the serious challenge. According to the report on ‘India’s urban awakening’ by Mckinsey Global Institute, in the next twenty years, India will have 68 cities with a population over one million- up from 42 today. That is nearly twice as many cities as Europe. All of the cities developed around 19th century in Europe and America had easy availability of land, gas and water. India is late starter and is far more crowded and complex. Therefore, India requires a far more efficient and sustainable solution for servicing urban areas and can reap the benefits by using technology to learn from practices from other parts of the world. The community that has worked for centuries in these stable cities have always been chaotic, messy and unstable. Not just the idea of smart city, a collaborative partnership between government, industry, academia and civil society might be required.
SOLUTIONS IN MEGATRENDS
Why do smart city offer only improvement? It is just the superimposition of megatrends over megatrends resulting in hyper density. Although city is a hyper-density, but, from the psychological needs, safety, belonging and love, esteem, awareness, aesthetic to self-actualization, there are needs that still needs to be fulfilled. Are we controlling these or are we trying to create a digital city, a socially inclusive city and a city that ensures improved quality of life. Today, it has taken on multiple meanings that vary depending on who is proposing it. The only unifying factor seems to be a four-tear data centre. Those were also the smart beginnings when a crowd watched, as new, automated traffic lights are erected at Ludgate Circus, London, 1931. So what are we going to call ICT based children safety system as running or a bus stop with ICT based shopping facility in Seoul, Korea? Are we looking forward to resilience? Taking our initial steps from service availability, continuity, data integrity etc. If we just look into the owners of phone throughout the world, 41% have 1 to 2, 9% have 3 and 11% have 4 or more. Yet there are nations where telephonic services have not yet reached properly. 2/3 of the world is still not connected to the internet but the data chaos we are suffering from is tremendous and discussed further. By 2019 there will be 5.6 billion smart -phone subscriptions. Listening to Revolution 9, by Beatles, and going through a visually convincing city simulation wearing Google glasses. Everything seemed changed. Which marks the disturbing thought that when these simulations are non-differentiable from real thing(apart from zero likelihood of being mugged), some might just want to spend their days in them. The smartest city of the future can exist only in our heads, as we spend every single second plugged into a virtual metropolitan reality that is so much exiting than anything actually existing, and fail to discern as the world around us crumbles. The notion of smart city in its full contemporary form appears to have originated from within these businesses, rather than any other party, faction or personality recognized for their contributions to the theory or practice of metropolitan planning. We should rather have a chart of companies destroyed by these. What more is there, if an entire city has an ‘operating system’? What happens when something wrong goes here? Software have a much more probability of crashing. The smart city, according to Hollis, is a ‘Perpetual Beta City’. We can’t be sure that accidents will not happen, driverless cars will not crash. They have already started to turn Delhi Metro to driverless trains, drones might hit passenger aircraft. How smart will the architects of smart city look then? If the data is being released and people are reusing it, under what purpose and authorship this is being done? The smart city might be a place like Rio on steroids, where no one can disappear. A recent article on ‘The Guardian’ heads, ” The smart city is, to many urban thinkers, just a buzz phrase that has outlived its usefulness: ‘the wrong idea pitched in the wrong way to wrong people’. So why this is happening? Looking into the challenges faced by the ones hoping to weave cutting-edge networks and gadgets into centuries-old streets and deeply ingrained social habits and patterns of movement. This was the central theme of the recent “Re-Work future cities summit” in London’s Docklands-for which two-day public tickets ran to an eye watering £600. The event was structured with numerous, fast ted talks, with 15 minute investor-friendly presentations on everything from ’emotional cartography’ to biologically inspired buildings. Not even one non-Apple branded laptop could be spotted amid the spectators, and at least one attendee was boldly sporting the telltale fat cyan arm of Google glass on his head. One skeptical observer of many presentations at the future cities summit, Jonathan Rez of the university of New South Wales, suggests that, ‘A Smarter Way’ to build cities ‘might be for architects and urban planners to have psychologists and ethnographers on a team. That would certainly be one way to technologists call the ‘end user’ – in this case, the citizen. After all one of the tribunes asks the crowd in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: ‘What is the city but people?’ 
Below is the graphic that demonstrates the collaborative economy in whole. 
‘If we have mobile devices, with the sensors deployed in them, these individual devices can be tracked easily’, while showing a smartphone game, Ingress, Mishal points out. ‘And there is nothing that would prevent us from visualizing that movement in simcity-like scapes, like in watch dogs where you can see an avatar moving through the city and we can call up their social media profile. Even you represent your faction out there(Niantic Project). If you are trying to search a very large dataset about how someone is moving, its very hard to get around it, but as soon as fire up a game-style visualization, its very easy to see, ‘Oh, that’s where they hang around most of the time, that’s where they club around in the weekends, that’s where they booze up a lot. As the companies are continuously bidding for the contracts, Haque observed, the real target for their advertizing is clear: ” The people it really speaks to are the city managers who can say, ‘It wasn’t me, the decision maker, It was the data'”. Yes, we will be able to get to the work on time; Seamless shopping experiences will be there, cameras will look for safety. Well, all these things make a city bearable, but they don’t make a city valuable. The ‘smart city’ criterias are missing the foundations of a visionary leader who moves beyond the planning and begin pilots that prove value, the understanding of costs/benefits and exploration of available funding options in the scenario like we have in India are also missing. Further factors like the improvements in internal support, exploration of technology options, learning from peers along with the search of right partners are also included. The collaborative economy honeycomb shows number of companies claiming to involve in the sectors like- learning, municipal, money, goods, health and wellness, space, food, utilities, transportation, services, logistics, corporate etc. to empower the people. Isn’t it just like FDI? They claim that honeycombs are resilient structures that enable many individuals to access, share, and grow resources among a common group(A complete directory of over 9,000 startups worldwide can be accessed at http://meshing.it/). This raises a question about owning of data. Who owns the data? Even about the manipulation. Who manipulates data? A contract with these companies is generated as a performance contract (how much input is given) and assessment is based on the amount of resources taken. This is all.
From traffic patterns and web posts, web history to music downloads, logistic to medical records, data is recorded, stored and analyzed to enable the technology and services that the world relies on every day. Big Data is a major issue, and how these massive amounts of data can be used? Depending on the industry and organization, big data encompasses information from multiple internal and external sources such as transactions, social media, enterprise content, sensors and mobile devices. Companies can leverage data to adapt their products and services to better customer needs, optimize operations and infrastructure, and find new sources of revenue. By 2015 4.4 million it jobs have been created globally to support big data, with 1.9 million in the United States. Looking into the volume and scale of data, 40 zettabytes(43 trillion GB) of data will be created by 2020, an increase of 300 times from 2005. Out of 7 billion world population, 6 billion people have cell phones clicking and uploading time and again. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion ( 2.3 trillion GB) of data is created each day. Already in India, most of the companies have at least 100 terabytes(100,000 GB) of data stored. Velocity of streaming data is another factor. The simple modern cars have close to 100 sensors that monitor item such as fuel level and tire pressure. The New York Stock Exchange captures 1 TB of trade information during each trading session, not just this, by 2016 it is projected there will be 18.9 billion network connections(almost 2.5 connections person on earth). There is a huge variety of data existing in different forms as well. As of 2011, the global size of data in health care was estimated to be 150 exabytes(161 billion GB). By 2014, 420 million wearable, wireless health monitors were used. 4 billion+ hours of video are watched on Youtube each month. 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every month. 400 million tweets are sent per day by about 200 million monthly active users. Certainly these huge volumes, velocities and variety of data will generate uncertainty of data. Separation of information and meaning is already generated due to uncertainty, for example, in Google, the hierarchy is created by the number of hits, not by any other kinds of evaluation. Poor data quality costs US around $3.1 trillion a year(much more than a smart city budget). 27% of respondents in one survey were unsure of how much of their data was inaccurate. 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make the decisions. How can we put our cities on ante then?
PSYCHOLOGICALLY
We know that the question of sufficient geography is a major part. But, what makes cities? CCTV in neighborhood, incrementing the environment, it might be happening because people think that somebody else is responsible for monitoring their environment. We are undermining the sense of neighboring relations and generating another sense of abstraction of responsibility with apps. Even now, when smart cities are in an initial stage, people are losing the sense to negotiate with one another in public space. One may say, that cities are made to cater inefficiencies in life that find us to furnish the moment in life that we remember. Its merely about getting from point A to point B in the fastest time. What if everyone in Mumbai starts to use a bicycle? When we slow down to a point and start to follow one another as individual at one point; when we don’t roll ourselves with our technology. Here we are using technologies to underweight encounters of one another. The landscapes might show smoother experiences(everyone is seen with a networked interface device) but a recent survey says that more sense of wellbeing is seen in us while we come across more strangers. We might be able to mould the city according to our needs, but still, end up trapped in our own bubbles, the psychological bubble of comfort. In these situations, what if an app goes to strike? It is readily possible because I am a smart city but my brand runs in California. Maybe we want open source guys, rich guys and platform guys in my town. We had metro guys before but they are outdated. The major psychological issue is that word ‘SMART’ has no loyal opposition. Amitabh Bacchan and Shahrukh Khan are also SMART. What about our right to be forgotten? 70% of GDP is hit by weather, and 20% water, still, is wasted due leakages in cities. Even such simple systems are of a major concern. It is not just about the systems, but understanding of where we are living. Smart Cities, might just end-up the democracy.
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION
The smarter cities challenge has came a long way from the from the programs that clicked off in Austin, Texas; Katovice, Poland; Rio, Brazil; Mecklieberg County, North Carolina; Ho-Chi-Minh city, Vietnam etc. since long. The major surprise for the planners is how much these cities have in common. Weather they are overgrown towns or giant metropolises, rapid growing or mature, the problems cities face are amazingly similar. And so are the potential solutions. Leaders around the world have looked into these in a holistic way and have succeeded, they looked for the potential/opportunity in the threat rather than the problems to generate a resilient response. Some of them kept their mindset like a CEO, of a major business, city-run might be compared to that. Philadelphia suffered a major decline during 1960-70 due to its location between Washington DC and New York City. Mayor Nutter calls his city as business enterprise as they have a board of directors, 17 member city council(shareholders), 1.5 million(taxpayers). He said: “If I dint deliver my product more efficiently, effectively and cheaply, my customer base will find somebody else”. In Geraldton, a city of 40,000 on remote west coast of Australia. Economy of this place is mostly based on mining, wheat farming, and bit of tourism. Citizens of this place had aspirations of low carbon future. Tony Brun, city CEO believes that city’s goal now is nothing less than to become the first carbon neutral industrial region in the world. The vision of deliberative democracy(not possible in our smart-city vision), which would be, both, defined and supported by citizenry through neighborhood meetings, experts debates etc. Clear lines of authority and cooperation were set up in St. Louis. This city has a tag: ‘Most dangerous city in America’. The government agencies involved in crime fighting here were fragmented. Some would report to the mayor, others to state governor and in an unusual arrangement dating back to civil war, the police department is overseen by state board. Mayor Francis called upon ICT to simplify complex systems. Now they have an IT system, producing shared view of each individual who enters criminal justice system. The issues that cities face don’t respect geographic or organizational boundaries, so, leaders must team up with other institutes that have a stake in city and its future. Board bases alliances aimed at sharing ideas and resources and taking challenges on their own, none of the institutions can tackle this on their own. Sirasua, Silicy faced issues due to tourism and petrochemical industry, food issues were also faced in Cebu, Philippines. All these were sorted out by the use of collaborative ICT in its limited scope. It is necessary to exploit the value of data as well. Birmingham was a former automobile manufacturing city. City council had to reduce city’s operation budget by 25% in just four years. This is now nearly achieved. In southwestern Pennsylvania, researchers from Carnage Mellon University are using Pennsylvania as living laboratory experimenting with smart transportation solutions. They are addressing everything from bus scheduling, to parking, to pothole monitoring, to intelligent traffic light switching, to pothole monitoring etc. Still they have not reached a conclusion. For the leaders, it’s necessary to be bold and brave. Transformational goals are necessary then incremental. Christian Etrosi, Mayor of Nice, France and Kgosientso Ramokgoda, executive mayor of Tshwane, South Africa are appreciable examples. Taking a long view is also required. Don’t let the problem occur at the very first place. Anticipate what’s coming. Cheongju in South Korea is no more car-oriented but human oriented. One of the best examples where threat was picked up as an opportunity is of Brantford Ontario; Malmo in Europe. In the industrial wasteland, 2500 tons of waste is collected every day. All the local buses are powered through the biogas produced from this waste. Every 10 kg of waste collected produces the biogas equivalent to one liter of petrol. Surely, none of DMIC cities can set up an example here.
IDEA GENERATION
May it be the air pollution, control of CO2 emissions of factories, pollution emitted by the cars and toxic gases generated it farms; forest fire detection; structural health; perimeter access control;; Traffic Congestion(Monitoring of vehicles and pedestrian affluence to optimize driving and walking routes), smart roads(warning messages and diversions according to climate conditions and unexpected events like accidents or traffic jams), Intelligent Shopping; Noise Urban Maps; water leakages; waste management; radiation level check, electromagnetic level check(Measurement of the energy radiated by cell stations and WiFi routers) etc. done through ICT. One questions remains static. Are we increasing the threats or are we trying to decrease them? Are we looking forward to blame data for our mistakes? Is it the way our future generations meant to survive?
Another major issue in India is the understanding of these technologies among common man, we are not considering it here on this belief that future generations will be well acquainted with these systems. They will have to as these things are going to be planted into the very soul of them since their formative years. Maybe they will personify cities as these ICT controlled livable places only. Rather this urban chaos will divert into some another kind of chaos, created by silicon chips and programs, waiting for some singular force to acquire and rule. In this world of trends, this trend might turn out to be the major hazard. The cities with Factions, no democracy. Monetary status might separate these factions of people. This current and in-trend vision for ‘SMART CITIES’ might just take us to the darkest days of human survival on Earth. Mobile Phones and Telecommunication systems are already shortening up the lives. Numerous deaths and diseases are being already seen. So, why intensify this? Chaos begin wherever a road reached, a bigger chaos will start to generate once ICT reaches with this intensity into the city system. Tushar Rajkumar, from Manipur, remembers those self sustained ponds they had alongside every house before. Fresh water, fish and whole cycle of every household were maintained from those. These started to vanish once road reached these settlements, numerous pipes supply water now. Digital systems will detect leakages in them. Urban centers are being built instead of real ‘SMART CITIES’.
Whole world is a chaos of demographic shifts happening. Behavioral change is one of the major factors which directly relate to issues, one of such is traffic. Maybe this problem of traffic can be sorted out with holistic planning instead of setting up various radiation emitters. Technological breakthrough is a major part, so why not look into fueling of local innovation rather than leveraging mobile and internet? A village women who has been growing and experiencing vegetable cultivation all her life does not need a ICT based tracker(particularly in India) but a Biomass Gasifier to meet her energy needs. Resource scarcity and climate change can be considered for managing, sustainable development, and accountable resource utilization through holistic planning in specific for the area. Accelerating globalization may be considered as one of ‘development’ factors but remote/isolated developments are equally necessary. Otherwise these settlements will be like a extinct mammoth or a sparrow(nearly extinct due to mobile radiation). Global economic power might be well generated through information aided decision making and consumer oriented approach, a limited scope of ICT may be involved in these. It is necessary to create a vision initially with proper market and opportunity assessment. This vision should lead to the urban intelligence where infrastructure planning, business and economic plan, technology review and selection is done. This should then start reverting to the visioning after engagement of social innovations, citizen and community consultation etc. Clear differentiation of initial and real-time statistics is required. Resources can be organized into immediate, medium term and long term. Everyone should be made well aware of their resource utilization, and the resources they haven’t left for their future generation. Just as an person understands the implications of his/her daily monetary decisions, similarly, he/she should be aware of his communal and ecological implications , his actions. Analytics is a part where ICT can help in a limited scope (Example covered in design thesis done alongside to this paper). A country as a larger unit can have shared goals, strategic choices and should remove obstacles. Sub systems on larger/regional levels may have fine-tuned goal(characteristics, location etc.). Numerous real smart cities may exist within this defined patterns.
ABOVE: Illustrations by Luc Schuiten. These techniques are possible and have been tested well. We can even grow cities. No need to create a carbon footprint agenda. We have many other solutions as well lying in research papers.
ICT may help to promote such techniques.
Note: Rest of this booklet is only collection of facts and Data.
INCEPTION OF AN INTERACTIVE HABITABLE BIOSPHERE
Note: Rest of this booklet is only collection of facts and Data.
Recent Comments