Smart Cities in India: Revolutionising Urban Living and Governance

India Government’s Smart Cities Mission aims to establish smarter, citizen-friendly cities that would provide the citizens with the comforts of urban life augmented by the powers of technology.In this article, we will look at what a smart city is and what it can offer to the people of India.  We will also take a glance at the current status of the Smart Cities Mission.

What is a Smart City?

It's tough to agree upon a single definition of a smart city— the definition varies across cities and countries. The vision of what a smart city means would also vary based on the level of development from which one is looking at.

Generally speaking, a smart city aims at developing the urban ecosystem across “institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure.”

In the case of Smart cities in India, the goal is to establish a city that promotes an aspirational quality of living for its citizens. A city where electricity, water, sanitation, mobility, housing, governance, IT connectivity and digitisation are of supreme quality.

It is impossible to come up with a complete list of features that would make a city smart. But the Central Government’s Smart Cities Mission has come up with an illustrative list—

5 Aspirational Features of a Smart City in India

Here are some features you can hope to find in the Smart Cities of India–

1. Mixed Land Use

Promoting mixed land use in area-based developments means planning for "unplanned areas" with a variety of activities and land uses that work well together and are close to each other. This helps make better use of land. The States will give some freedom in land use and make rules to deal with change;

2. People-Centric City Planning

Smart cities will make it easier for everyone to find a place to live. 

It would also ensure that life becomes easier for the pedestrian. Think of walkable and cycle-centric neighbourhoods that would boost the local economy. The neighbourhoods would be safer, there would be less traffic and pollution.

3. Urban Recreational Spaces

Parks, playgrounds and open stages in an intelligent city would help in decongesting traffic. Green zones would reduce the effect of urban heat on areas. This will also have a positive impact on ecological balance.

4. Multi-modal transport

The Urban smart city will see the seamless integration of multiple modes of transportation

Promoting a variety of transport options, such as walking, biking, and public transportation;

5. Citizen-friendly Government

Governance in a smart city would rely more on technology to make services more accountable and transparent. People wouldn't have to travel to Government offices, instead, they could access services online from the comfort of their homes.

How Smart Cities will be Implemented in India?

In India, Smart City implementation is prioritised by the government through the Central Government sponsored Smart Cities Mission.

The Smart Cities mission takes an Area-based Smart City Development approach.

100 Indian cities have been shortlisted to be developed into a Smart city. Here are various developmental approaches that would be taken by the Smart Cities Mission.

Retrofitting

Areas of the chosen city will be identified by consulting with citizens. In these areas, the existing infrastructure services are assessed and the city administration will chart out a strategy to make it smart. The focus will be on adding more intensive infrastructure service levels. 

Redevelopment

Areas coming under redevelopment will be replaced with enhanced infrastructure to enable mixed land use. Examples of the redevelopment include 

• the Bhendi Bazaar Project (also known as the Saifee Burhani upliftment Project) in Mumbai and
• Redevelopment of East Kidwai Nagar in New Delhi.

Greenfield Development

Areas shortlisted for greenfield development will be vacant areas of more than 250 acres in size. These areas would be used to create affordable housing to cater to the needs of an expanding population.

GIFT City in Gujarat is an example of greenfield development.

What makes greenfield development different from retrofitting and redevelopment is that the greenfield developments could be located within or outside the limits of the Urban Local Bodies authority.

Pan City Development

In Pan city development selected smart solutions will be added to the entire city’s infrastructure. 

For instance, an intelligent traffic management system may be applied to the entire transport sector of the city. This will positively impact the productivity and quality of life of citizens.

Another example is the case of implementing a wastewater recycling system or a smart metering system across an entire city.

How Many Smart Cities in Each State and Union Territory?

100 city in India that have been chosen for the Central Government’s smart city project. 

While the cities are chosen it was ensured that the number remains equitable across the states. The Government uses a formula to choose the number of cities.  The formula evaluates two main criteria–

1. The urban population in a state and
2. the number of statutory cities

Here’s a quick look at the number of smart cities chosen in each state and union territory.

State/ Union Territory	Number of cities
Andaman and Nicobar	1
Andhra Pradesh	3
Arunachal Pradesh	1
Assam	1
Bihar	3
Chandigarh	1
Chattisgarh	2
Daman and Diu	1
Dadra and Nagar Haveli	1
Delhi	1
Goa	1
Gujarat	6
Haryana	2
Himachal Pradesh	1
Jammu and Kashmir	1
Jharkhand	1
Karnataka	6
Kerala	1
Lakshadweep	1
Madhya Pradesh	7
Maharashtra	10
Manipur	1
Meghalaya	1
Mizoram	1
Nagaland	1
Odisha	2
Puducherry	1
Punjab	3
Rajasthan	4
Sikkim	1
Tamil Nadu	12
Telangana	2
Tripura	1
Uttar Pradesh	13
Uttarakhand	1
West Bengal	4

How Smart Cities are Selected

Smart Cities in India for the Smart Cities Mission are selected through collaborative exercise (“Competitive and Cooperative federalism”) including both the state governments and the central government through a stage-by-stage process.

1. Intra-State Competition

The State Governments shortlist potential smart cities based on certain criteria decided by the Central Government. At this stage, the states will shortlist a few cities considering the number of cities that are allowed from each state

2. All India Competition.

The responses given by states and union territories are used to create a potential-1oo smart cities list.

3. Proposal and selection stage

Each smart city puts forth its proposal and implementation plans, following which the proposals are evaluated by an expert panel, following which expert panel declares the smart cities.

4. Implementation

The selected cities will set up Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and start working on the implementation while the cities which are not selected work on improving their proposals for the next round.

Convergence with Other Government Schemes

A Smart city is about comprehensive citizen-centric development. And so, it will occur by integrating economic, social, institutional and physical infrastructure. 

The Government already has many sector-centric schemes that attend to various aspects of infrastructure.

For instance, the AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) and the Central Government’s Smart Cities Mission converge in their goal of achieving urban transformation— the only difference is that AMRUT focuses on projects while Smart Cities Mission focuses on area-based strategy.

Similarly, emerging smart cities will tap into other Government schemes such as

1. Swachh Bharat Mission
2. Digital India
3. Housing for All and
4. National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana.

Smart Cities in India — Current Status

The Government has selected a total of 100 cities for smart city implementation.

As of now, 5002 of the 7742 projects have been completed.

Smart Cities from Various States of India

Let's take a look at the different smart city projects that are in various stages of implementation in different cities in India.

Smart Cities in Uttar Pradesh

10 cities from Uttar Pradesh have been selected as part of the Smart Cities Mission, and they are  

1. Lucknow
2. Varanasi
3. Kanpur
4. Prayagraj
5. Agra
6. Bareilly
7. Jhansi
8. Saharanpur
9. Aligarh
10. and Moradabad

Smart Cities of Odisha

The Government of Odisha had proposed 5 cities as part of the Smart Cities mission, namely, Bhubaneswar, Rourkela, Cuttack, Sambalpur and Berhampur. As of now, 23 projects across the cities of Bhubaneswar and Rourkela have been completed.

Bhubaneswar smart city project is the first among the few smart cities that have been declared sustainable and citizen-friendly.

Smart cities in Gujarat

In the 6 cities selected for the smart Cities mission in Gujarat,

1. Ahmedabad
2. Rajkot, 
3. Surat
4. Vadodara
5.  Gandhinagar and 
6. Dahod 

209 of the 337 projects have been completed by the end of the year 2021.

Smart City in Tamil Nadu

12 cities in Tamil Nadu was chosen for Smart City Mission

1. Tiruchirapalli, 
2. Tirunelveli, 
3. Dindigul, 
4. Thanjavur,
5.  Tiruppur, 
6. Salem, 
7. Vellore, 
8. Coimbatore, 
9. Madurai, 
10. Erode, 
11. Thoothukudi and 
12. Chennai

Smart Cities in Karnataka

Other than Bengaluru, 6 cities in Karnataka have been chosen for the Smart Cities Mission. They are

1. Shivamogga, 
2. Mangaluru, 
3. Tumakuru, 
4. Hubballi-Dharwad, 
5. Davangere and 
6. Belagavi.  

Smart Cities in Haryana

2 cities, namely Karnal and Faridabad had been chosen for the implementation of the Smart Cities Mission.

With State Governments and Urban Local Bodies actively participating in the development of smart cities, the country will see a hike in public and private infrastructural investments across the country in the coming decade.

e-Governance mechanisms set up would mean that people have more voice, and more power and consequently— better housing, more jobs, and more disposable income.

This will reflect positively on Real Estate Investments.

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