Bloomsbury to Publish Smart Cities Unbundled by Sameer Sharma
Smart Cities Unbundled: Ideas and Practice of Smart Cities in India by Dr. Sameer Sharma, describes the foundational ideas and approaches that have shaped an innovative nationwide Smart City program that utilizes technology to strongly support area-based development, citizen preferences, and basic infrastructure and services.
About the book: 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 developmentcan 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.
About the author: Dr. Sameer Sharma has more than 17 years of experience in urban development. Most recently, he has the mission director of the India: Smart Cities Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the capacity building programme for urban development. Additionally, he has formulated the value capture finance policy, created the Livability Index and linked the indicators to the Sustainable Development Goals. Earlier, he has worked as Municipal Commissioner of three cities over six years and has won more than seven awards and appreciations, including the President’s Award for Best State in promotion of civil society organizations in slums. He has published widely, including more than five Academic papers, and has contributed several articles to many widely read newspapers in areas related to metropolitan development, finance and resource mobilization and governance. He has written a book, Hourglass Management Paradigm: Pathway to Excellence in Leadership in 2015. He has also contributed chapters in three books. Dr. Sharma is a keen researcher and has published more than 12 research papers on Spatial Economics applied to urban areas, Social Capital and Metropolitan Development. He has delivered several keynote lectures including, “Governance in mega-cities” at India Urban Conference: Evidence and Experience, 2011. He has also taught courses on Spatial Structures and Statistics for Urban planners to post graduate students at University of Cincinnati, USA. He has a Ph.D. in Metropolitan Development from the University of Cincinnati, USA and a D.Litt.