The inclusion of Shimla into India's 100 Smart City Mission marks a crucial moment in the city's imagination of reconciling its imperial history and cultural heritage with its new identity as ‘clean, serene and vibrant’. In this storymap report we present the lessons from Shimla through the themes of imagining, governing, and living urban futures.
Read MoreThe inclusion of Jalandhar into India's 100 Smart City Mission marks a crucial moment in the city's imagination of reconciling its history of emigration with a new identity as sports and healthy city. In this storymap, we present the lessons from Jalandhar through the themes of imagining, governing, and living urban futures.
Read MoreThe inclusion of Nashik into India's 100 Smart City Mission marks a crucial moment in the city's imagination of reconciling traditional and modern elements of its identity. In this storymap, we present the lessons from Nashik through the themes of imagining, governing, and living urban futures.
Read MoreRead post by PI Ayona Datta on how the current COVID19 crisis will affect India’s small cities.
Read MorePI Ayona Datta argues that our access to urban history is now determined by algorithms programmed to recognise the past as a repository of maps and images on the web. This has transformed the way that the urban poor ‘see’ the city, see themselves in the city and thus imagine possible futures for themselves.
Read MoreRead post by PI Ayona Datta which traces the planning applications for houses built by working classes since the late 19th century. These house biographies remind us that Shimla’s current tourist spectacle above is made possible because of the continued house building by the poor and working classes since the dawn of the Empire.
Read MoreResearch Assistant, Varun Patil continues his commentary with a part 2 on searching for the ‘Smart city’ in Jalandhar. In this post, he explores the ongoing work of the smart city interventions which aim to reduce congestion and improve traffic.
Read MoreProject PI Ayona Datta introduces Shimla, through the paradoxes of speed, time and slowness in the future smart city. While Shimla dreams of a smart urban future, the everyday life in its informal settlements along the shifting sliding hill slopes reminds us that this dream needs to adjust to the slow contoured life of the hills.
Read MoreProject PI Ayona Datta introduces Sudama Bazaar in Jalandhar through the transnational connections that make smart city proposals irrelevant for both older and younger generation of traders. While the ‘Smart Chowk’ proposals create a disillusionment of the future, smart citizens are seen as those who are able to emigrate to the West to access better opportunities and hope for the future.
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