Area-Based Urban Renewal Approach for Smart Cities Development in India: Challenges of Inclusion and Sustainability

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area-based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case-study cities. The article examines the claims of the so-called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on-ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT-driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.

Development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotives plant (1960's – 1970's)

In the article on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. It was found that during the 1960s and 1970s, the team of designers of the Dnipropetrovsk plant, having strong research and production potential, at the request of the Ministry of Railways of the USSR developed and built unique samples of shunting electric locomotives of the VL41 and VL26 series to meet the needs of Soviet main-line railways with modern high-tech electric vehicles. It is proved that in the absence of thorough experience and, accordingly, the possibility of a rapid technological breakthrough in the development of main-line locomotives, during the experimental operation of shunting electric locomotives VL41 and VL26, several design shortcomings were identified, which led to their further use exclusively on the house tracks of enterprises, and designers of Dnipropetrovsk plant later focused on the development and construction of traction units for industrial application commissioned by the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. At the same time, the construction of the main-line railway equipment to the order of the Ministry of Railways allowed the staff of the enterprise to gain valuable experience, which was later used in the implementation of the renewal program of rolling stock of Ukrzaliznytsia. Although today the Dnipropetrovsk plant is in decline, the analysis of historical circumstances of formation and design and technological heritage of electric locomotive construction in Ukraine is of fundamental importance both in the general perspective of the development of domestic transport engineering, and the railway industry in particular. Further study of the history of Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant requires clarification of the historical circumstances of institutionalization of the Special Design and Technology Bureau of the enterprise from the creation of industrial electric locomotives and traction units to the development and re-equipment of main traction rolling stock and specialized repair equipment within the state enterprise “Ukrainian Research Design Institute of Electric Locomotive Engineering”.

Building Community: A Critical Appraisal Of Toronto’s Tower Renewal Program

High-rise housing is a global phenomenon. In Toronto, the sheer number of tower blocks and declining conditions within them has pointed to the importance of redeveloping high-rises in order to improve their current performative capacity and secure their use for future generations. In addition, improving the public realm and social infrastructure in these communities has emerged as an important component of the redevelopment approach. Looking at the City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal program, the paper critically evaluates its environmental, economic and social/cultural objectives using Tower Renewal documents, local case studies and relevant literature. Analysis of program specifics leads to a greater understanding of the potential and prospects, as well as areas for improvement in tower redevelopment programs, the roles and collaborative relationships between participating parties, and how placemaking processes are and can be pursued and accommodated in redevelopment programs.

Building Community: A Critical Appraisal Of Toronto’s Tower Renewal Program

High-rise housing is a global phenomenon. In Toronto, the sheer number of tower blocks and declining conditions within them has pointed to the importance of redeveloping high-rises in order to improve their current performative capacity and secure their use for future generations. In addition, improving the public realm and social infrastructure in these communities has emerged as an important component of the redevelopment approach. Looking at the City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal program, the paper critically evaluates its environmental, economic and social/cultural objectives using Tower Renewal documents, local case studies and relevant literature. Analysis of program specifics leads to a greater understanding of the potential and prospects, as well as areas for improvement in tower redevelopment programs, the roles and collaborative relationships between participating parties, and how placemaking processes are and can be pursued and accommodated in redevelopment programs.

A palace fit for the future: Desirability in temporal work

Research on the strategic organization of time often assumes that collective efforts are motivated by and oriented toward achieving desirable, although not necessarily well-defined, future states. In situations surrounded by uncertainty where work has to proceed urgently to avoid an impending disaster, however, temporal work is guided by engaging with both desirable and undesirable future outcomes. Drawing on a real-time, in-depth study of the inception of the Restoration and Renewal program of the Palace of Westminster, we investigate how organizational actors develop a strategy for an uncertain and highly contested future while safeguarding ongoing operations in the present and preserving the heritage of the past. Anticipation of undesirable future events played a crucial role in mobilizing collective efforts to move forward. We develop a model of future desirability in temporal work to identify how actors construct, link, and navigate interpretations of desirable and undesirable futures in their attempts to create a viable path of action. By conceptualizing temporal work based on the phenomenological quality of the future, we advance understanding of the strategic organization of time in pluralistic contexts characterized by uncertainty and urgency.

Una dottrina rivoluzionaria della sistemazione dello spazio. Massimo Quaini geografo-pianificatore

The idea of a planning-oriented geography was part of the ‘revolutionary’ renewal program of the discipline proposed by Massimo Quaini since the 70’s. First through an analysis of how human geography was built in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, then in the theoretical and methodological writings in which he critically examines his experiences as a geographer engaged in urban, regional, environmental and landscape planning works. In such writings, he highlights the latent and unsolved contrast between the aim of meeting the needs of the inhabitants and the tendency to organize the local space according to economic competition.

Sunny flats will replace…A congested slum block: Sydney’s post war housing improvement schemes

The present text traces the post war slum clearance program in Sydney, Australia, that saw the construction of modern blocks of flats drawn from international examples of rehousing schemes. This State-funded urban renewal program continued from the late 1940s until the 1980s. Many of the blocks of flats are slated for demolition, yet no overall assessment of their design quality or detailed discussion of the range of building forms or apartment layouts has been undertaken. There is a danger that these well-designed blocks will vanish rather than be retrofitted and that this unparalleled demonstration of modern housing progress by the State of New South Wales will be incomplete.

Industrial Renewal and Land Clearance

This chapter presents a chronological narrative of institutional fixes implemented to counter industrial decline in Chicago. It considers different programs and institutions that supported Chicago's industrial renewal program and examines the Chicago Land Clearance Commission (CLCC) as the city's major industrial redeveloper in the 1950s that was authorized to designate blighted areas and vacant land as redevelopment projects. It also elaborates the CLCC's key role in the creation of new industrial property as a solution to Chicago's industrial decline. The chapter details how the CLCC used state and federal legislative tools that enabled cities to appropriate federal funds for private ends, to allow the exercise of eminent domain over blighted property, and to realign ownership rights in favor of property developers. It describes blight, falling property values, and declining retail sales as problems that would continue to undermine Chicago's prominence and cut into company profits.