As cities swell and the pressure on urban infrastructure intensifies, the concept of the Smart City emerges not merely as an ideal but as a necessity. This groundbreaking volume offers an in-depth, multidisciplinary journey through the evolving landscape of urbanization and sustainable smart city development. This book offers a thorough description of the challenges posed by increasing global urbanization. Unplanned urbanization gave rise to the change of urban land use patterns, slums, inadequate housing, sanitation hazards, rampant pollution, and the rise of global epidemics. It focuses in particular on strategies and services to solve the difficulties and concerns raised by increasing urbanization. This book demystifies the smart city, not just as a technological aspiration, but as a living, breathing urban ecosystem. Starting with foundational concepts and global case studies, it journeys through the multilayered dimensions of smart governance, intelligent transport systems, resilient infrastructure, citizen participation, and data-driven decision-making.
In addition, the contributors will take insights from environmental design, geography, strategic planning, application of science and technology, and engineering design to go beyond the jargon of technical innovation and expose the political, social, and physical effects of digitalizing the world in smart cities. This book highlights the planning of land use, strategic development, and ecosystem-based knowledge to enhance economic growth and a healthy urban environment, and smart city management, the contradictory aspects of smart city studies, and provides useful insights into the creation and execution of policies to strengthen decision-making processes in smart cities. This book uniquely blends academic rigor with real-world applications, including over a dozen case studies from Indian and international contexts—ranging from slum infrastructure upgrading in Bankura to geospatial tree mapping in Pune and density-based service analysis in Bengaluru and Delhi.
In addition, the book leads the reader to a greater understanding of smart city growth, both theoretical and realistic. Designed for urban planners, researchers, civil engineers, geographers, policy strategists, and students, Urbanization and Sustainable Smart Cities offers both a strategic roadmap and a technological toolkit for those envisioning the smart cities of tomorrow—equitable, green, digitally empowered, and resilient.