As developing countries continued to witness urbanisation at a rate never seen before in the history of humankind, the year 2008 delivered a key moment, when the global population in urban areas surpassed that of their rural counterparts for the first time in human history. Such a scale of urbanisation resulting in intensive use of resources is often linked with environmental challenges including climate change that can make human life unsustainable on planet Earth. This has put the need for long-term sustainable development at the heart of any such urbanisation. The case is acutely severe in the Global South as countries such as India, China and Nigeria will be responsible for 35 per cent of the increase in urban population worldwide from 2018 to 2050 (UNPD, 2018). Thus, with such a large majority of the population living in the cities, it is crucial to solve the contradictions of developing these areas in a sustainable manner. This has resulted in a range of initiatives and scholarly discussions around technology's possible role in resolving climate change and sustainability issues.

Proponents argue that urbanisation should be seen less as a challenge and more as an opportunity to deliver economic growth and infrastructural upgrades while also addressing associated environmental concerns. Here, technology, and more specifically information and communications technology (ICT), is often proffered as a panacea to deliver sustainable urban development, addressing the challenges while maximising the opportunities. When ICT is applied at the scale of cities and towns, what we have are smart cities: ‘places where information technology is combined with infrastructure, architecture, everyday objects and our own bodies to address social, economic and environmental problems’ (Townsend, 2013: 15). ICT's growing dominance is evident in the global smart city industry's valuation at USD 549.1 billion in 2023, a total that is expected to reach more than a trillion dollars by 2028 (Statista, 2024).

India, the most populated country as of 2024, has arguably been the epicentre of such rapid urbanisation and infrastructural transformations, including smart cities. In 2015, for example, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, launched the National Smart Cities Mission, a multibillion-dollar project to upgrade 100 existing Indian cities to smart cities.