Smart City Palava and Adoption of E-governance

Abstract

Palava is India’s first green field smart city, located at the centre of the economic triangle of Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Kalyan. It is developed by the Lodha Group, a leading real estate company in India. The smart city hosted many technologies, such as smart security, smart utility metering, online lodging of requests and complaints, and smart transportation. Initially the technology adoption among the citizens was not very high, especially the usage of app and portal of the Palava smart city. In 2016, Shaishav Dharia, the young CEO and Development Director of Palava, decided to delve deeper into the situation to discover the reasons behind such low adoption of app/portal among the residents. He and his management team took a number of initiatives to make the situation better. After extensive effort over a number of months, the adoption rate improved. Dharia’s team wanted Palava to be one of the leading smart cities in the world with technology enabling every aspect of the city. How could they enhance the adoption of smart technologies by the residents of the smart city?