City To Smart City

BACKGROUND:- During Election campaigning Narendra Modi promised to voters that once he will be PM of the country, few of the Indian cities will get an opportunity to be called as Smart City. And these cities will raise the lifestyle of INDIANS as well as will work as the engines of the economy After becoming PM he kept his promise and last year 98 cities were shortlisted for smart city project.

Of the 98 cities and towns that five years down will graduate into smart cities, 24 are capital cities, another 24 are business and industrial centres, 18 are culture and tourism influenced areas, five are port cities and three are education and health care hubs. Statewise distribution of cities was like 13 from Uttar Pradesh, 12 from Tamil Nadu, 10 from Maharashtra, 7 from Madhya Pradesh, 3 each from Bihar & Andhra Pradesh.

PRESENT SCENARIO:-Union Minister for Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday declared the first list of 20 cities out of the 98 short-listed for the Smart Cities Mission.The Ministry has no role in the selection of the cities and an expert committee set up by the Ministry is looking into it, Mr. Naidu said.The next two years will see the inclusion of 40 and 38 cities, respectively.

LIST OF 20 SMART CITIES IN FIRST ROUND

WHAT IS SMART CITY?

The first question is what is meant by a ‘smart city’. The answer is, there is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people. The conceptualisation of Smart City, therefore, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. A smart city would have a different connotation in India than, say, Europe. Even in India, there is no one way of defining a smart city.

Some definitional boundaries are required to guide cities in the Mission. In the imagination of any city dweller in India, the picture of a smart city contains a wish list of infrastructure and services that describes his or her level of aspiration. To provide for the aspirations and needs of the citizens, urban planners ideally aim at developing the entire urban eco-system, which is represented by the four pillars of comprehensive development-institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure. This can be a long term goal and cities can work towards developing such comprehensive infrastructure incrementally, adding on layers of ‘smartness’.

A 'smart city' is an urban region that is highly advanced in terms of overall infrastructure, sustainable real estate, communications and market viability. It is a city where information technology is the principal infrastructure and the basis for providing essential services to residents. There are many technological platforms involved, including but not limited to automated sensor networks and data centres.

Currently we can't expect smart cities fully automated and full of technology like European countries plan & have. Strong reason behind this is that most of our metro cities are not well planned and consist of slums and dwells too.

So practically Indian Smart cities will promise following comfortabilities first as mentioned on official smart city website.

• Adequate water supply
• Assured electricity supply
• Sanitation, including solid waste management
• Efficient urban mobility and public transport
• Affordable housing, especially for the poor
• Robust IT connectivity and digitalisation
• Good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation
• Sustainable environment
• Safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly
• Health and education

SMART CITY FUNDING:-After the Stage 1 of the challenge, each potential Smart City will be given an advance of Rs. two crore for preparation of SCP which will come from the city’s share of the A&OE funds and will be adjusted in the share of the city.In the first year, Government proposes to give Rs.200 crore to each selected smart city to create a higher initial corpus. After deducting the Rs. Two crore advance and A&OE share of the MoUD, each selected Smart City will be given Rs. 194 crore out of Rs. 200 crore in the first year followed by Rs. 98 crore out of Rs. 100 crore every year for the next three years.

For full list of 98 smart cities and points earned on the basis of various criterions click here

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.