The promotion of digital technology as an apolitical solution for urban problems is a class politics – of interests that drive global consultant firms, technology providers, big bureaucracy, and vendor networks. It seeks to simultaneously obscure the nature of urban problems as well as the social-class dimension of ‘smart’ urbanism. The Smart City Mission is a part of the toll-booth model of urbanisation: the outsourcing of traditional urban government functions to the hands of state-private corporate entities, the expropriation of public assets and the privatisation of public goods and services, and the creation and policing of exclusive networks and enclaves – in order to generate opportunities for rent extraction (tolls).
Hussain Indorewala is a teacher and urban researcher. He teaches at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture (KRVIA) in Mumbai. His research work is focused on urban history, urban planning, political economy of land and housing, and public transport.