Vol. 8 No. 4 (2021)
Space and Culture, India

Special Articles

Museums and Heritage Sites — The Missing Link in Smart City Planning: A Case Study of Pune City, India

Published 2021-03-26

  • Poonam Gandhi
    • ,
  • Chaitanya Ravi
    • ,
  • Prasad Pathak
    • ,
  • Smriti Jalihal

Poonam Gandhi
Associate Professor of Sociology, FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Chaitanya Ravi
Assistant Professor, Public Policy, FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Prasad Pathak
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies, FLAME University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Smriti Jalihal
FLAME University

Abstract

The process of urbanisation has dramatically increased in India in recent years. The Government of India launched Smart City Mission in 2015 which was intended to transform 100 cities into smart cities. The focus of our research is one such city in India on its path to smartification. Pune’s smart city mission focuses on techno-infrastructural development to increase mobility and digital connectivity. Social-cultural and historical indicators are not considered an integral part of this development. Given this, does the smart city mission of Pune privilege the techno-infrastructural development of a city over its social and cultural development?  In this paper, we identify museums and heritage sites in Pune as signifiers of a city's culture and analyse metro development plans through GIS to understand whether the museums' current geography mentioned above and heritage sites require alignment with Pune’s planned smart city mission. The research shows that the quest to ‘upgrade’ and ‘modernise’ is not adequately aligned with the role of key historic-cultural institutions such as museums and heritage sites. The case of Pune city shows that, without careful and inclusive development plan, a full roll-out of the smart city project will exclude a large number of historical and cultural spaces such as museums and heritage sites from emerging as an integral part of smart cities across the country and render them peripheral to modern urban life.  

Keywords

Smart City, Cultural Heritage, GIS, Museums, Urban Development, Pune, India

pdf

References

  1. Allam, Z., & Newman, P. (2018). Redefining the smart city: Culture, metabolism and governance. Smart Cities, 1(1), pp.4-25 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities1010002
  2. Anand, A., Sreevatsan, A., Taraporevala, P. (2018). An overview of the smart cities mission in India. Policy Brief. French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and Centre for Policy Research. pp.1-4. https://cprindia.org/system/tdf/policy-briefs/
  3. Ashcroft, Bill (2017). Postcolonial theory. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory.
  4. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0281 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0281
  5. British Broadcasting Corporation (2019). Louvre draws record 10m visitors. British Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46748282
  6. Bounia, Alexandra (2017). Cultural societies and local community museums: A case study of a participant museum in Greece; Cultural Heritage, Cultural Policy. pp. 29-40. www.ejournals.ed/zarzad zanie-w-kulturze)
  7. Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C., & Nijkamp, P. (2011). Smart cities in Europe. Journal of Urban Technology, 18(2), 65-82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2011.601117
  8. Census of India (2011). Government of India., www.censusindia.gov.in
  9. Dafoe, Allan (2015). On Technological determinism: A typology, scope conditions and a Mechanism. Science, Technology, and Human Values. 40(6) https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243915579283 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243915579283
  10. Dagdushethganpati (2015). http://www.dagdushethganpati.com/about-temple/
  11. Datameet (2019). https://github.com/datameet-pune/datameet-Pune.github.io/tree/master/maps
  12. Datta, A. (2015). New urban utopias of postcolonial India. Dialogues in Human Geography. 5(1), pp. 3-22. doi:10.1177/2043820614565748 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820614565748
  13. Datta, A. (2018). The digital turn in postcolonial urbanism: Smart citizenship in the making of India's 100 smart cities. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43(3), pp.405-419. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12225
  14. Diddee, J., Gupta, S., & Bhandare, S. (2000). Pune: Queen of the Deccan. Elephant Design Pvt. Limited.
  15. Financial Times (2020). Cities turn to high culture to help them work better. https://www.ft.com/content/55bf2972-4730-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5eda22
  16. Hall, R. E., Bowerman, B., Braverman, J., Taylor, J., Todosow, H., & Von Wimmersperg, U. (2000). The vision of a smart city (No. BNL-67902; 04042). Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (US).
  17. Han, H., & Hawken, S. (2018). Introduction: Innovation and identity in next-generation smart cities. City, Culture and Society. 12, pp.1-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2017.12.003
  18. HongKong Buzz (2019). Giant LED screen to beam moving art images across harbour from Cultural District’s M+ Building (2019). HongKong Buzz. https://hongkongbuzz.hk/2019/12/giant-led-screen-to-beam-moving-art-images-across-harbour-from-cultural-districts-m-building
  19. Katz, B. (2017). This museum was the world’s most-visited in 2016. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/museum-was-worlds-most-visited-2016-180963624/
  20. Kelkar Museum (2019). https://rajakelkarmuseum.org/about.html
  21. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). (2019) https://www.wmata.com/schedules/maps/upload/2019-System-Map.pdf
  22. Mundhe, N.N., & Jaybhaye, R.G. (2017). Chronological development of Pune from 758-2014 AD International Journals of Environment, Ecology, Family and Urban Studies. 7(5) DOI: https://doi.org/10.24247/ijeefusoct20175
  23. Museums of India (2019). An online resource for mapping the museums of India. Museums of India. https://www.museumsofindia.org/
  24. Nasser, N. (2003). Planning for urban heritage places: reconciling conservation, tourism, and sustainable development. Journal of Planning Literature, 17(4), pp. 467-479. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0885412203017004001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412203017004001
  25. PMC Open Data Store (2020). Pune Municipal Corporation. http://opendata.punecorporation.org/Citizen/User
  26. Pop, I. L., & Borza, A. (2014). Increasing the sustainability of museums through international strategy. Economia Seria Management 17, pp. 248-264.
  27. Preston, L. W. (2002). Shrines and neighbourhood in early nineteenth-century Pune, India. Journal of Historical Geography, 28(2), pp. 203-215. 10.1006/jhge.2001.0398 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2001.0398
  28. Pune Municipal Corporation (2019). https/www.pmc.gov.in, 2019
  29. Pune Smart City Pune (2019). Smart city wins two smart project awards - Pune smart city portal. https://punesmartcity.in/pune-smart-city-wins-two-smart-project-awards/
  30. Sarasbaug (2019). http://sarasbaug.in/
  31. Smart Cities Mission (2016). Smart cities mission. Government of India. http://smartcities.gov.in/
  32. Smart city proposal (2019). Pune Municipal Corporation. http://pmc.gov.in/en/smart-city-proposal
  33. Smith, R. M., Pathak, P. A., & Agrawal, G. (2019). India’s “smart” cities mission: A preliminary examination into India’s newest urban development policy. Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(4), pp. 518-534 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1468221
  34. Smithsonian Institute (2019). Our museums, galleries and zoo. https://www.si.edu/museums
  35. Sonkoly, Gabor. (2017). Historical urban landscape. Springer International PU DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49166-0
  36. Sonne, Lina (2018). Mumbai metropolitan region: Putting the art in SmArt; urban futures. Observer Research Foundation. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/mumbai-metropolitan-region-putting-the-art-in-smart-46000/
  37. The World Bank (2018). Urban population. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS
  38. Townsend, A. (2013). Smart cities: Big Data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. New York: W.W. Norton &Co.
  39. Unnithan, V. (2018, November 8). Under the Canopy. Pune Mirror. https://punemirror.indiatimes.com/entertainment/unwind/under-the-canopy/articleshow/66541324.cms
  40. Vogeler, I. (2010). Critical Cultural Landscapes of North America. Chapter1. http:// people.uwec.edu/ivogeler/CCL-bookchapters-pdf/index.htm.
  41. What is smart City? Government of India, Smart cities mission http://smartcities.gov.in/content/innerpage/what-is-smart-city.php
  42. Williams, A., Robles, E., & Dourish, P. (2009). Urbane-ing the City: Examining and refining the assumptions behind urban informatics. The Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Doi 10.4018/978-1-60566-152-0.ch001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-152-0.ch001
  43. Yang, Bing, Perlman, & Janice (2016). Humanising cities Through Culture. Culture, Urban, Future. Global report. pp. 131-161. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260634
  44. Ziyaee, M. (2018). Assessment of urban identity through a matrix of cultural landscapes. Cities, 74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.10.021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.10.021

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.