About Jammu Smart City

Smart cities are cities that work. Most importantly, work for whom? And, what do we mean by cities that work? Cities are confluences of people; places where people live, come to meet, exchange ideas, earn livelihoods, access education, health and other services and enjoy a life of good quality. People are at the core of the city. Therefore, cities should work for their people. Cities that work for their people will continuously become better versions of themselves with each passing day.

"We shape cities, and they shape us." - Jan Gehl

To answer this question, we need to understand the reasons which make a city attractive to people in the first place. These reasons would be, to a large extent, different for different cities and different for different sets of people and therefore cannot be generalized. Some cities attract people for the opportunities that exist therein as markets and centers for manufacturing, some others due to the greatness of their cultures, or their cosmopolitan vibes, and others for their ability to provide better education and health facilities or a combination of factors and so on. There are, largely, two kinds of factors, which attract people into cities - 'push factors', led by distress or scarcity in their place of origin - like droughts, violence, social rifts etc. and 'pull factors', like better opportunities for education, business and industry, leisure, art and culture etc.

Decoding the specific reasons for which people choose a certain city over others is at the core of understanding any city's DNA - the foundational building blocks that drive the city. The aspirations of a city's inhabitants evolve with time and hence these reasons have to be studied in the relevant contexts. In order to understand these reasons, smart city practitioners need to ask some crucial questions, for example - which are the different communities that constitute the city, what are their current needs, how have their needs evolved, what are their hopes and aspirations, what attracts outsiders to the city etc.

A city can be said to work for its people only if it supports them in their chosen pursuits. If one is a migrant, coming into the city for two years in connection to my job, his or her needs would hover around access to decent rental housing, efficient modes of public transport, recreational places and so on. However, if one is a student, his or her needs could be about availability of good educational institutions, safe cycling and walking infrastructure. This is different from the needs of an elderly citizen who may prioritize access to good quality healthcare above other things.

Clearly, not all people or sets of people desire the same things. In order to simplify the understanding of the diversity of needs expressed by a city's diverse residents, it is useful to classify them under three broad pillars - livability, economic-ability and sustainability. Imagine these as three folders on your computer that have multiple files of different types, dealing with different aspects.

These, thus, constitute the three broad outcomes that a city needs to target in order to work for its people. In other words, to answer the question 'what is a smart city' in another way; it is a city, which is livable, sustainable and has a thriving economy offering multiple opportunities to its people to pursue their diverse interests.