Centre Will Launch 50 Smart Cities By December 2019: Housing Minister

The centre will soon roll out first 50 smart cities by December 2019, revealed the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, while speaking at the National Real Estate Development Council’s (NAREDCO) 15th National Convention on August 20, 2019. The ministry has also directed all the smart city authorities to choose a project that would show a direct impact on the quality of life of its residents. The ministry would bring out a report on these high impact projects on October 2, 2019 which is also the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. 

Over 5,000 projects proposed under the Smart Cities Mission

Cities selected under the Smart Cities Mission have suggested a total of 5,151 projects, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri told the Rajya Sabha on January 3, 2019. In a written reply, the minister told the Upper House that all the cities had incorporated special purpose vehicles and constituted city-level advisory while 97 of them had procured project management consultants.

In June last year, the government had announced Shillong as the 100th city to receive funding under the Centre's flagship mission. Earlier, in January the ministry had come out with a list of nine smart cities taking the total number to 99. These cities were Biharsharif (Bihar), Diu (Daman & Diu), Erode (Tamil Nadu), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Kavaratti (Lakshwadeep) and Bareilly, Moradabad & Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh). 

List of cities selected in the third round

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The Smart City Mission is considered one of the most ambitious projects of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. Launched in 2015, the project has entered into execution stage where 100 cities will be provided Central funds to improve infrastructure and become smart.

What is a smart city?

According to the Ministry of Urban Development, there is no universally accepted definition of the smart city as it can mean different thing to different states and different countries. In the Indian context, the objectives of a smart city would be to provide core infrastructure and a decent standard of living to people with the clean and sustainable environment. All this will be achieved through the application of smart solutions. The idea is to promote inclusive and sustainable development at compact areas and replicate the model in other cities.

Core infrastructure includes adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, proper sanitation, solid waste management, efficient public transport, affordable housing, robust information technology connectivity and digitalisation, good governance through e-Governance portals and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens and health and education.

How smart cities will work in India

The Central government launched the smart city challenge in 2015, where states have to nominate cities and compete with others to get funding. Total 98 cities were shortlisted from the nominations received. The proposals were invited from these selected entries and based on this, 20 cities were selected in the first round of the funding from the Ministry of Urban Development.  In the second round, 27 cities were chosen for the funding. A special purpose vehicle has been formed to lead the mission in the cities selected.

You may also like to see: List of 98 smart cities

List of cities selected in the first round

List of cities selected in the second round

Key features

So, what would smart cities of future do? According to the ministry, they would

• Promote mixed land use in area-based developments

• Provide equal housing opportunities for all

• Create walkable localities and reduce congestion, air pollution and resource depletion, apart from boosting local economy

• Preserving and developing open spaces

• Promoting a variety of transport options

• Make governance citizen-friendly, technologically advanced and cost-effective

• Provide a new identity to the city

• Applying smart solutions to infrastructure and services in area-based development to improve them

The global leaders

Global cities such as Barcelona, Copenhagen, Singapore, London, Seoul and Helsinki are some of the cities that are renowned for adopting smart solutions. For instance, Barcelona is a global leader in using Internet of Things. Apart from this, smart solutions for street lighting, smart energy usage are other features here. Similarly, Copenhagen sends less than two per cent of its waste to landfills; half of the waste is recycled and most of the waste is used to generate heat for the city's heating network. On the other hand, all government services in Singapore are accessible online, and an in-house digital government services team has rolled out several citizen-centric mobile apps for transport, health and municipal services.