Smart cities may be detrimental to India’s environment unless emphasis placed on supporting utilities: Study

India’s plans to create 100 new ‘smart cities’ to support the country’s rapidly growing urban population may have a significant detrimental impact on the environment, unless greater emphasis is placed on supporting infrastructure and utilities, a major study has found.

Researchers from the University of Lincoln in the UK conducted a detailed analysis of the environmental implications of the planned developments, which would see medium-rise housing (between three and five storeys) replaced with high-rise towers of 40 to 60 storeys.

“When announcing its plans in 2015, the Indian government said that this type of development would be sustainable, environmentally friendly and ‘smart’,” researchers said.

The latest research suggests that the resulting increase in population density is likely to place significant extra demands on resources, including electricity and water, while simultaneously increasing the output of waste in the form of drainage, solid waste and greenhouse gasses.

The predictions are based on analysis of the Indian government’s exemplar development, Bhendi Bazaar, a 16.5-acre site in Mumbai that has been put forward as a flagship of the proposed new ‘smart’ cities.

The study used an ‘extended urban metabolism model’ as a means of analysing the area, providing a basis for measuring flows of resources that are both consumed …read more