Cities in developing countries are rapidly expanding. India has 438 cities with a population of more than 100,000 people, accounting for 11% of the world’s cities. It is expected that the urban population will be doubled in next 25 years. Unfortunately, the development is unplanned and chaotic, resulting in inequitable distribution of public services, costly housing, a lack of adequate streets and roads, and insufficient open spaces. Scientists and engineers all over the world are looking for technological solutions to problems such as poor urban planning, non-availability of affordable housing, deficiency in water supply or electricity, unorganized traffic, poor quality public transport and parking facilities, poor healthcare system, waste management, air and water pollution, etc. 

Pillai College of Engineering has taken a timely lead and has started a series of conferences on “Technologies for Future Cities” to examine some of the challenges raised above. The invited talks and contributed papers covered six tracks, namely (i) Software technologies for future cities, (ii) Hardware technologies for future cities, (iii) Systems for future cities, (iv) Materials for future cities, (v) Healthcare for future cities and (vi) Policies and governance for future cities. The first conference in the series was held during January 08-09, 2019 and second conference during October 08-09, 2021. Both the conferences were a great success. There were about dozen invited talks followed by a Panel Discussion. About 250 scientists and engineers attended the conference. The full details of the conferences are available on www.futurecities.mes.ac.in.