Intelligent Urbanism Guiding the Smart City Region Development: Case Study of Bhopal

Abstract

City can be accurately measured by its impact as a node of various land use units which diffuses the social, political and economic effects in the region. City region reflects association of multiple municipalities’ and scales of government in which responsibility for urban and regional development is distributed formally as well as informally. Smart cities are dominating the current paradigm of planning with a focus on the use of information and communication technology for the development of the society. In India, it is exemplified under the ‘Smart Cities Mission’ where the emphasis is laid on the promotion of core infrastructure and application of information and communication technology to improve the quality of life in urban areas. Modern development concept of intelligent urbanism as defined by Christopher Benninger through 10 axioms or principles guides the city planning which would help the regions to achieve the results of India’s smart cities mission. The intelligent urban region strives to create a balance between economic, environment and social development- three pillars of sustainability. The concept composed of ten principles integrates the planning and management discourse in the preparation of a spatial plan for the region. The paper tries to highlight the impacts of spatial development and planning of the Bhopal city region, in light of these ten principles considering its functionality. The paper tries to understand how the evolution in the planning of Bhopal has impacted the spatial and sectoral development of the region and its achievement of ‘smartness’.