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 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 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 MoreIn this piece, Research Assistant, Mahima Taneja delves into the hustle and bustle of Shimla, the Smart city project, as well as her personal musings and fieldwork experience in this smart small city.
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