Skip to main content

Smart planning for smart cities

A smart city is not a destination, but a journey of several smart steps which will help change the way we live:


  • There are five essential components to the success of this mission: visionary leadership; global open standards; public private partnership; smart regulation (concerted efforts to identify regulations which do not lend themselves to a smart city and proactively address them—like stamping of boarding passes and hand baggage tags at airport security); and establishing new ecosystems to deliver these projects.

While we have witnessed visionary leadership at the top, percolating that vision down to the last urban local body continues to be an area of concern.
  • In the first stage of the competition, the process of citizen consultation was employed very well by most local governments. This is a healthy sign for participative governance. 
  • The mission will be a true success when it becomes more of a demand-driven, citizen-led phenomenon. And now is the time for the chosen cities to start thinking about the implementation process. It is also important for the government to identify possible bottlenecks and remove them.

The first phase of the smart cities competition has identified certain gaps. While the government has done a good job of creating a shortlisted pool of consultants, there needs to be a proper mechanism for pricing these proposals. Quality and cost-based selection criteria could be a potential solution to this as we move towards the next phase—setting up of the SPV and implementation.
  • Indian cities must learn from their counterparts in the West who are already deriving the results of being smart. While solutions from the West will not work lock, stock, and barrel in India, it is important to study their journey towards becoming smart. We should adopt and adapt relevant solutions from the West to suit our criteria.

* Building an integrated masterplan or a blueprint on how we conceive our smart city to be in the next 15-20 years;
* Leveraging ICT as a key enabler to delivering the smart city vision;
w Building an implementation plan with prioritised services based on citizen feedback and the monetisation potential of those services, thereby reducing overall funding requirements;
* Focusing on the most pressing problems of the city and looking for solutions specific to the city through consultation—what works for Pune might not work for Vizag. In the process, not forgetting the culture of the city;
* Planning an integrated network across all verticals in the city and avoiding the silo-based approach that most cities today use. This will allow for a more efficient means of service delivery to the citizens;
* Building an innovation ecosystem. Once all departments are connected to a single network, using Open Data to provide access to relevant data to the public and also invite start-ups to create apps to solve pertinent issues. In fact, a lot of innovation in smart cities could come from start-ups.
  • While discussions are largely about the Smart Cities Mission, we should not ignore the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, which has the potential to deliver basic benefits to villages and whose impact could be more far-reaching than Smart Cities.
  • As the world watches us, we must keep in mind that this exercise is not only about having a 100 smart cities like Barcelona or Dubai in India, it is more about offering services that will improve the quality of life of our citizens. A smart city is not a destination, but a journey of several smart steps which will help change the way we live, work, learn and play.
Source: Financial Express

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India Tech Vision-2035

India Tech Vision-2035 India's technology thinktank under the ministry of science & technology has come out with `Technology Vision 2035' here at the ongoing Indian Science Congress, identifying the challenges ahead and how they can be dealt with through technological interventions while realising the dream of a developed India by the year 2035. The thinktank -Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) -in the vision document lists a technology roadmap for India, giving details of 12 sectors and technologies that in some cases exist but need to be deployed, some in the pilot stage that must be scaled up and technologies in R&D stage. It, in fact, talks about many future technologies, ranging from flying cars, real time translation software, personalised medicine, wearable devices, e-sensing (e-nose and e-tongue) to 100% recyclable materials among others which may be used in different areas to solve day-to-day problems “The trajectories del...

12 April is Observed as International Day of Human Space Flight

12th April is being observed as the International Day of Human Space Flight to commemorate the date of the first human space flight in the history of mankind every year.  In 1961 Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Union (USSR) cosmonaut undertook first successful first human space flight on this day. And this historic occasion had opened the way for space study for the benefit of all humanity. This historic day is celebrated as Cosmonautics Day in Russia and some other former USSR countries. This year 2016 is 55th anniversary of First Human Space Flight. Background After UN General Assembly had passed its resolution A/RES/65/271 of 7 April 2011, United Nations (UN) had declared 12th of April as the International Day of Human Space Flight. The main objective behind international celebration of this day is to memories each year at the international level the beginning of the space era for mankind. It also aims to reaffirm the important role of space science and technology...

SWACHH BHARAT MISSION

SWACHH BHARAT MISSION Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) on October 2, 2014, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The ambitious programme aims to make the streets, roads and infrastructure across the country clean by October 02, 2019, the 150 th  birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. It is India’s biggest ever cleanliness drive. The relevance of the Swachh Bharat Mission Sanitation has emerged as a key issue since the 2011 Census highlighted e glaring data on lack of toilets in the country by stating that over 26 million people in India defecate in the open. Launched with an estimated cost of around Rs 62,009 crore, Swachh Bharat Mission aims to achieve the elimination of open defecation in the country. Among its other objectives are conversion of insanitary toilets to pour flush toilets, putting an end to the inhuman practice of manual scavenging and carrying out Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM). Involvem...