A Multi-City Study of Congruency between Smart City and Transportation Reforms and Their Effects

Abstract

Introduction: Rapid urbanization is posing complicated problems in the areas of governance of urban reforms. Extant research signifies the role of immense interplay between such urban reforms in influencing sectoral functions of urban local bodies and in turn the public benefits. It is however less understood how broader urban reforms need to be shaped in consideration with their embedded reforms that target specific sectoral reforms to enhance urban quality of life. In particular, there have been growing calls for alignment between major sectoral reforms like that of mobility and the broader ones like that of smart city within which the former tends to be embedded.

Objectives: To this end, this article examines the dynamics of alignment between smart city reforms and multi-modal transportation reforms and their effect on the urban quality of life.

Methods: Through a grounded, inductive, qualitative, case-based approach, the article attempts to contribute to theory by comparatively studying the congruency in the governance of smart city and transportation reforms amongst four Indian cities.

Results: The findings indicate that a greater level of congruence between these broader and sectoral reforms stems from shared artefacts of reference, nested structures of steering entities and presence of institutional intermediaries. The article further validates the findings by correlating the levels of congruence between reforms in each of these cities with the quality of life indices.

Conclusions: The findings call for functional integration across three layers – policy, organizations and actors. The article thereby adds to the conversation about urban development and opens the door to inclusive, resilient, and genuinely smart cities by combining mobility with smart city governance.