The Smart City Mission in India And Prospects of Improvement in The Urban Environment

Abstract

The skewed and rapid urbanization in developing country India has resulted in fissiparous and multipronged problems at different levels starting from city or perhaps regional levels to local or perhaps neighborhood in the lack of good urban planning and regulatory mechanism the urban environment adversely. Many issues that have been elevated in recent times are related to traffic congestion, reduction in the total amount of green cover, peri-urban settlement typology that has ultimately affected the natural ecosystem, and the surrounding areas’ environment adversely. These prevailing issues will worsen over the coming decades as the urban population increases at a phenomenal rate, thus highlighting the urgency to take appropriate actions. The growing urban environmental crisis has even more aggravated because of the constrained budgets and inefficient institutional machinery without clarified responsibilities. India is a nation of diverse geographical and climate zones with most of the climate, geographical conditions, and ecosystems of the globe found in various regions of the nation. These factors also affect the design, quality, and development of the urban built and unbuilt environment. The previous studies highlighted the role of meticulous, coordinated. They planned the development of urban cities and centers that are also self-sustaining and ecological to solve existing and upcoming challenges. The Smart City Mission launched by the Government of India is deemed the solution and emerging planning strategies to tackle and mitigate the issues of unregulated growth and rapid urbanization of the city currently and realize the objectives of the sustainable future. The unregulated urbanization with no due consideration to the ecosystem has turned into a significant source of deterioration of the quality of urban environment, a recurring and emerging disaster like urban flooding, Etc. And a significant cause of global climate change. This paper attempts to assess and evaluate the significance of smart city projects and missions in planning and developing cities that could deliver a much better urban environment and help achieve the goal of environmental resilience in the nation.