ASU Scholarship Showcase

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

This chapter is not a guide to embodied thinking, but rather a critical call to action. It highlights the deep history of embodied practice within the fields of dance and somatics, and outlines the value of embodied thinking within human-computer interaction (HCI) design and, more specifically, wearable technology (WT) design. What this chapter does not do is provide a guide or framework for embodied practice. As a practitioner and scholar grounded in the fields of dance and somatics, I argue that a guide to embodiment cannot be written in a book. To fully understand embodied thinking, one must act, move, and do. Terms such as embodiment and embodied thinking are often discussed and analyzed in writing; but if the purpose is to learn how to engage in embodied thinking, then the answers will not come from a text. The answers come from movement-based exploration, active trial-and-error, and improvisation practices crafted to cultivate physical attunement to one's own body. To this end, my "call to action" is for the reader to move beyond a text-based understanding of embodiment to active engagement in embodied methodologies. Only then, I argue, can one understand how to apply embodied thinking to a design process.

Successful public transit systems increase the value of locations they serve. Capturing this location value to help fund transit is often sensible, but challenging. This article defines location value capture, and synthesizes lessons learned from six European and North American transit agencies that have experience with location value capture funding. The opportunities for and barriers to implementing location value capture fall into three categories: agency institutional authority, agency organizational mission, and public support for transit. When any of these factors is incompatible with a location value capture strategy, implementation becomes difficult. In four of the cases studied, dramatic institutional change was critical for success. In five cases, acute crisis was a catalyst for institutional change, value capture implementation, or both. Using value capture strategies to fund transit requires practitioners to both understand agency organizational constraints, and to view transit agencies as institutions that can transform in response to changing situations.