Smart Cities as the Center of Modernization

Abstract

Smart City is a booming international concept. Smart cities concept reiterates to what we have already been doing so far as Planners and Architects. However, the smart cities concept today, especially in India, in its ideological sense of the term, has more to do with the efficiency and accuracy of our planning systems by the use of resources to get the most benefit, with minimum cost and damage. The conceptualization of Smart City, therefore, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. The paper aims at understanding the approach for “Smart city “in context to the city Ajmer. The vision statement for Ajmer has been evolved after extensive citizen consultations, self-assessment of the city, and analysis based on the previously prepared city reports/ documents. The city's vision has been validated with the help of various stakeholders along with the mapping of desires of the citizens of Ajmer. The vision is based upon five core themes that have been derived from this process with an aim to develop Ajmer as a global, religious and heritage tourism destination with high quality living and sustainable smart citizen services.