Smart Cities: but are we smart enough for those?

a few of several issues to ponder before we leapfrog 

Readers can easily remember that Smart City is not a new thing that we are hearing after the new government took charge. In these days, when a mobile phone get ‘outdated’ within a year or two, when durables gets ‘backward’ within a few years, the term ‘Smart City’ is indeed quite old. In the early days of liberalisation a book: ‘The Technopolis Phenomenon: Smart Cities, Fast Systems, Global Networks’ (1992) mentioned this word. In India we have been hearing of smart cities for years. IBM is having an India specific portal on ‘smarter cities’ possibly since 2010. Then, the Hackathon event organised by Planning Commission in April 2013 discussed Smart Cities.

A 2011 Poster (from  http://w42.bcn.cat/)

Globally the idea of Smart Cities got a boost after the grand slump that erupted in 2008. Business needed impetus of public spending and Smart City idea was re-floated as a good business proposition to a world that had just crossed a watershed: 50% of global population became town-dwellers in 2007. It was not proposed from the angle of providing persons who have ‘been long in city pent’ with good liveable cities. The first Smart City Expo & Congress (Asociación mundial de ciudades inteligentes) was held in Barcelona, Spain, 2011, where city Hyderabad was present. Though, of course, we have some great Green Buildings, ‘success stories’ regarding smart cities are not that forthcoming. This is definitely a glitch not to be overlooked, but this is not a cardinal one. Let us look into a few significant points.

Creating cities needs materials and energy, smart or smarter whatever the tag be. And so the steel industry, cement industry, construction companies ... all are waiting in the wings for green signal from the government, which essentially means softer and slack treatment by the government. One such sample tells: “[steel production] is facing intense pressure due to shortage of raw materials ... not to mention problems stemming from closure of mines in states like Karnataka, Goa and Odisha”. Now, we all heard of the worrying phenomenon called global warming and we know that carbon-dioxide is a major culprit for this. But, for producing each kg of steel, even by best available European steel plants, we produce 1.9 kg CO₂. For 1 kg cement, it is at least 1 kg CO₂. It is only one aspect. We dig earth for raw materials — for 1 kg of steel we need about 1¾ kg ore, for 1 kg cement some 1½ kg limestone, and so, de facto, we move much more earth. We may console us telling that we Indians are using much less steel; we may rue our steel usage is only 60 kg/person vis-à-vis world average of 225 kg/person. But if we are to reach that mark we need extra 165×1.2 billion kg steel right now. For that, how much CO₂ we shall produce more? How much more disfigured India’s land will become due to mining? What we shall bequeath for our future generation despite our tall talks on sustainability? Moreover, do we have the right to ruin all the remaining beautiful landscapes and step up Acid Mine Drainage which devastates adjacent land and spoil water? When we shall say ‘enough’? Yes, we have heard of newer technology and green-chemistry coming forward to solve the material problem. But, suppose the glorified Calera Process of cement making – we heard promises and then it was abandoned; surely it lacked business feasibility. We have to work out more.

Dead Zone at the Arabian Sea, a NASA picture

What amenities our smart cities will have? Among others, the government drafted concept note says, there will be 100% sewage treatment, 100% houses will have waste-collection at doorsteps and there will be waste-segregation &c. But all these were essential and known features of any city! Why were we living in ‘stupid cities’ for so long under so many regimes that boasted of Nukes, space missions and even Pollution Control Boards? Why did governments let cities of Gujarat and Maharashtra dump untreated sewage to Arabian Sea to the effect of endangering both fish and fisher communities with a growing ‘dead zone’? How to believe them who are burying such facts with hollow speech-mongering that having 100% sewage treatment and 100% houses with doorstep-waste-collection facility are ‘smart-city’ things (and not some essentials that we should have had twenty-thirty years earlier)? It is shocking to find in a recent ‘research publication’ on smart cities that waste-treatment and not sending all waste to landfill is a ‘betterment’ that a Malaysian ‘smart’ city promises! 

Apart from such obvious aspects there is a very tricky thing called ecosystem complexity. We had words like ‘knowledge worker’ in 1959, ‘knowledge society’ in 1969. At that very time economic policy-makers of Europe, knowledgeable they were of course, formulated a trade policy: high tariff barrier for foodgrains to help their farmers. Animal raisers of Europe got a boon — import permission of cheap tubers like cassava to compensate for animal-feed that became costly due to high grain price. Cassava import started rising, also increased number of tuber-eaters, pigs. Cassava plantations started increasing in Thailand to meet the demand. Result 1: In Thailand cassava plantation grew about 2.5 times in 13 years – from 692,000 hectares in 1975-76 to 1,621,800 hectares in 1988-89 — nearly a million hectare increase. Thus in Thailand an additional area equal to the entire area of the Sunderban forest in West Bengal and Bangladesh combined was gone for cassava within 13 years!  Result 2: Greatly increased pigs (and other animals) meant more animal-excreta, which partly leached to rivers and then to the seas. By early 1990s there were algal blooms in North Sea due to nutrient enrichment from sewage. That proved detrimental for many fish species and so also for fishermen. So? “There are more things in heaven and earth” than we think we know!

The moral is: let us not play with environment and re-examine hundred times the 100 smart cities proposal. 

published in Business Economics, 1-15 October, 2014

the author is a chemical engineer and environmentalist