Growth with Optimization: Can Smart Cities Assist in Environmental Limpidness in India?

Abstract

Recently, the ‘Smart Cities’ project in India is a topic of discussion at most of the academic forums. The need for smart cities was felt in order to accelerate the pace and size of economic growth and hence economic development in Indian economy. The present paper tries to investigate the environmental aspect of Smart Cities Mission in India. The study argues that smart cities will in future help in protecting our environment from deterioration if job opportunities are also created simultaneously in the periphery regions of future smart cities which will minimize the migration rates in the smart cities. The study finds that there are 23 future smart cities in India which will experience problem of severe environmental degradation due to intra-state and inter-state migration if satellite regions are not developed all together in terms of employment opportunities specially in the primary and secondary sectors. This is specially required for the cities which are already in the list of world’s top most polluted cities and are also named in the list of future smart cities of India. The study asserts that the development of periphery regions will trim down the movement of people from less developed regions to future smart cities, thereby, reducing the burden on natural as well as man-made resources in the future smart cities.