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Abstract
The Urbanization is most predominant and contemporary process prevalent throughout the globe especially in developing countries like India. To sustain the brisk growth rate of economy and urbanization and to alleviate the problems arising due to the growth, an integrated approach and sustainable strategy is required. The inclusive and smart planning is one such emerging strategy to tackle and mitigate these problems. This paper attempts to analyze and evaluate the need for the development and planning of smart city projects in the country in line with various ongoing projects and the government's proposal for development of the 100 smart cities throughout the country. The analysis indicates that the cities are expanding and new cities are being formed mainly by transformation and growth from villages and towns due to rapid urbanization. But these cities lack basic infrastructural services and other amenities due to various reasons ranging from lack in administrative and service delivery mechanism to lack of proper planning vision, investment, management, and to some extent changing lifestyle, etc. Some green field development like GIFT, Lavasa, Kochi Smart city and Nano City have started but are far from satisfactory to cater to the demands of the sustainable cities and urban centres, hence there is an urgent need to plan for both green and brown field sustainable urban developments in form of eco-city or smart city or similar projects to bring out a balanced urban growth and development. The detail analysis and some effective strategies have been given in full paper.