Das, Diganta

The city of Hyderabad plays a significant role in urban transition processes at play in India. Cyberabad, a section of the city of Hyderabad, developed through the rapid urbanisation of rural villages and land, becoming a high-tech, state of the art, globally connected enclave. On weekday mornings in the neighbourhood of Madhapur, smartly dressed HITEC City workers, with ID tags, emerge from hostel accommodation and walk alongside large, black buffalo being herded into rundown dairies. This paradoxical use of space is replicated in the urban fabric of Cyberabad and surrounding Madhapur. Cheek-by-jowl urbanisation has created two very different types of urban locale: Cyberabad – air-conditioned, gardened, watered – a space of hydration and flourishing; and Madhapur – hot, dusty and desiccated – a space of dryness and water struggles. This paper explores whether aspects of urban flourishing and resilience are possible in the newly formed Telangana state and its capital, Hyderabad, through an examination of the past, present and future of the city’s water.

India is at the forefront of Asia’s urban transformation, with its urban population projected to reach 814 million by 2050. The Smart Cities Mission (SCM), launched in 2015, aimed to modernise 100 cities by integrating smart technologies to enhance governance, infrastructure, and quality of life. Initially influenced by Western smart urban models, SCM implementation followed a top-down approach, yet over time, cities have adapted smart initiatives to local needs. At the same time, centralised projects such as Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCCs) shaped early implementations, decentralised, community-driven adaptations have gained prominence. Cities like Bhubaneswar, Indore, and Varanasi have prioritised inclusive urban services, including transportation, sanitation, and cultural heritage conservation. Despite significant achievements, future smart urbanism must prioritise smaller cities, marginalised communities, and ecological sustainability. Emphasising participatory governance, gender-sensitive planning, and nature-based solutions can foster a more inclusive, equitable, and resilient urban future for India.

Singapore intends to become a “Smart Nation” through the use of smarter technologies and sustainable means to enhance the quality of life of its inhabitants. Universities are also increasingly seen as places of innovation of new smart and sustainable technologies, provincializing ideas and debates; serving as a testbed for local experimentation. Hence, to determine the status of developing Singapore universities as smart and sustainable campuses, this paper first discusses the role of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative in relation to the development of smart and sustainable universities in Singapore. In particular, NTU’s development as a smart and sustainable campus. Secondly, a conceptual framework is developed to assess NTU as a smart and sustainable campus by understanding the prevailing dimensions of the smart city discourse. Through a detailed survey and ethnographic field study method conducted on NTU Campus, the study finds that the university has been rapidly deploying smart technologies to enhance students’ learning environment and university residents’ everyday quality of living through technology and sustainability initiatives. This paper contributes meaningfully to the development of smart campuses worldwide and brings an Asian university perspective to the existing research on smart and sustainable campuses.

This paper presents a deep and critical analysis of Singapore's new wave of state-built digital tools and services and how it connects to its larger smart urbanism project, also known as Smart Nation. The COVID-19 pandemic, and particularly Singapore's response, served as a real-world testing ground for smart urbanist strategies. In particular, we analysed the logic that emanates from these novel digital interventions, how they operate on the complex urban built environment and the population, and their effects on urban and citizenry morphologies. Next, we examined a series of state-led technological implementations that have emerged since the Covid-19 pandemic, providing digital solutions that assist citizens with the changing rhythms of everyday living, data-capturing sensors and gantries to aid authorities in contract tracing efforts and enforce vaccination differentiation measures, geospatial digital mapping of demographic data, in withal robotics for automated policing and cleaning activities; and the use of AI and automated data-driven tools in public health to improve service delivery and care to patients. While we are unable to exhaust every piece of technology for the purpose of this paper, these developments, along with their design thinking and operations, we argue, are helpful in revealing the contemporary conjectures of Singaporean digital urban idealism and the governing strategies of the state. By examining Singapore's response, this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on smart urbanism, offering insights into how cities can leverage technology effectively while balancing technological innovation with privacy and public trust.

Our paper provides an introduction to, and context for, the 10 papers that comprise this special volume: Waterscapes Asia: Concepts and Practices. We discuss the various interpretations of what is meant by a “waterscape” and suggest some ways forward that may provide a bridge between the theoretical waterscapes framework and practical considerations that we hope will make the waterscapes concept more broadly useful. These 10 papers, representing contributions from India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Indonesia are decidedly applied and consider issues of inequitable socio-hydrological conditions that are impacted by flows of capital, political relations, and policy. Yet, they also represent efforts in quantifying water quality and quantity within the human-natural system nexus, and most importantly, the central theme of familiarisation as a path to more effective waterscape management.

Through the lens of dynamic change in the city’s waterscape, this paper examines Hyderabad’s global aspiration and the ways it impacts water provisions and accessibility issues for the poor locals.