Analysing the Dystopic Aspects of a Utopic Vision in Pune

They say that by 2050, the 70 percent of world population will be living in cities. The ‘IT Effect’ has rubbed off well in the real estate sector, and now plans to have a city-level impact. By and large, the smart-city concept, though an ‘indianized’ version of it, has become the ‘talk of the town’ for the entire country. In the globalized world, the ‘smart city’ concept is employed to employ drones, machines, computers, sensors & meters on a wireless broadband platform; as opposed to providing jobs to the influx of new urban population. It is still questionable whether this kind of shift is adaptable in India yet. Although the ‘smart city’ movement is addressing the urban context in general, it cannot be said that this is an architectural epoch, or a node in the time-line of history of Urban Design; it is rather, an epoch in the urban fabric, or a mass information technology movement; it cannot be enveloped under the term ‘urban design’ as it is an urban-level application of information technology. A consumer-specific concept, these new breed of cities aim at becoming centres of development, in competition with each other, capable of bank-ability and profit generation. The success of cities also relies on them becoming centres of consumption. In these cities, which are becoming centres of rising salaries and even higher rents, construction of real estate finds growth towards the fringes, bringing in gentrification and an increase in carbon-footprint. Pune, also known as the ‘culture capital of Maharashtra’, is home to more than 5 million number of people. The research aims to address the most basic questions like ‘why Pune’ and ‘why not’ for the smart city movement by analysing the proposal submitted by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to the City Selection Committee & the Environmental Status Report prepared by PMC for decision-making in the urban context. In this regard, it tends to carry out an analysis for the population and pollution rise, temperature trends over the past few years, unemployment and gentrification, accessible technology, pedestrian and traffic infrastructure, and how it addresses climate change in the proposal.