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1. Introduction
1.1 Urban agglomeration and smart neighbourhood initiatives
Cities are the centre of the economic development in any nation. Advancement in city life, quality of services and future opportunities attract more people in to a city space. This urban transition creates pressure on consumption of city resources, energy supply, public spaces and services. The urban areas are contributing around 60 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in India. The United Nations (Habitat, 2016) has projected 300 million new urban residents in India by 2050. Indian urban population was estimated around 0.254 billion, 0.33 billion and 0.42 billion in 1995, 2005 and 2015, respectively. It has been projected that Indian urban population would be 0.53 billion by 2025 (Habitat, 2016). It could be seen easily that from 1995 to 2025, Indian urban population would be nearly double. But the level of urbanization in India has not increased at same scale. In 1995, 2005 and 2015, the level of urbanization was 26.6, 29.2 and 32.7 per cent, respectively. It has been projected that by 2025, the level of urbanization would be 37 per cent (Habitat, 2016), merely very less in comparison to increasing rate of urban population. The rapid urban polarization increases strains on energy, transportation, water, housing (Schaffers et al., 2011) planning, development and operation of cities (Cash, 2016). This causes the depletion of city resources at a very high rate (Gu et al., 2015; Qu et al., 2013; Angel et al., 2011). The nature of urbanization depends on different development policies (Pugh, 1995) in a country. The lack of facilities, poor development planning, ignorance from top management (Nam and Pardo, 2011), high poverty level (Bramley and Power, 2009; Mason, 2010), income inequality (Mason, 2010), high wages (Ballas, 2013), quality of life (El Din et al., 2013) and glamour of cities (Ballas, 2013) are the main causes which promote the rural urban migration.
Frankhauser (1998) has defined urban agglomeration as a diffusive and elusive concept. The population growth and migration of people towards the cities are the important reasons for urban agglomeration. The city authorities usually fail to manage planned development due to this agglomeration which create problems like unemployment, congestion, lack of public services (Wu et al.,...