Perception of Smart City Globally

 The challenges faced by the cites across the world are primarily climate change, congestion, health,
safety and access to municipal service. The global understanding of a smart city is to overcome
these urban challenges by use of innovative methods while leveraging the power of
technology.

Perception of Smart City amongst Indian Citizens

 Upon numerous interactions and feedback from local residents and also from other sector
experts, we saw that the citizens have a very mix understanding of smart city. Many have
aspiration that complete city will transform and every thing will become perfect. Other think
that a separate area far from city is being developed as Smart city.

 This lack of information of Govt. Scheme has increased the attrition within the citizens and
the overall progress which smart city has achieved has been shadowed.

What is Govt. Aspiration under Smart City Mission?

 The idea behind GoI Smart City mission was not just to enhance city services through ICT but
also to do a comprehensive development of the city.

 Urban infrastructure development has been a struggling area in Indian scenario because of
few key reasons such as: Pace of urbanization, Limited Funds and limited capacity of govt.

 To develop a city in a comprehensive manner which includes all physical infrastructure and
all social infrastructure is virtually impossible to achieve.

 With above understanding Govt. of India initiated this Smart City mission in which one area
of the city (Selected through consultative process) will be developed in a comprehensive
manner. Development of small area (less than 10%) of city will require less fund and
technical resources.

 The cross-cutting sectors includes all sectors; core infrastructure, transport infrastructure,
health, education, landscape, commercial area etc.

 Complementing above shall be the ICT based services (for entire city) which will make citizen
services more efficient and accessible. Such as ICCC, ITMS, VTMS, Security Systems etc.

 This initiative shall demonstrate, how a completely developed area may look like to rest of
the city. This comprehensive development will become aspiration of the entire city and a
self-awarded citizen can make difference with participation and ownership.

How is this mission influencing the urban development systems?

 The city administrators and leaders were given liberty to utilize the funds in their aspiration
of smart city which shall be based upon citizen involvement.

 The sudden increase of city capacity of turning ideas to project is mainly because of new
approach adopted in the smart cities, were cities endeavor their aspirational project and
showcase the progress in a competitive platform.

 The city administrators and politicians are taking ownership of projects which is bringing
behavioral change in urban development system.
  The real winners in the smart city mission are tier 2 and tier 3 cities which can realize their
dream project transform the urban fabric of their cities. Funds of 1000 Cr may be small
amount for large cities like Pune whose municipal annual budget is approx. 6000 Cr. But for
a small city like Ujjain whose annual budget is 500 Cr, a grant of 1000 Cr is game changing.

 With the substantial investment capacity smaller cities are getting the exposure of national
and international expertise and are striving to achieve international project standards.

 The team of expert are available full time and are supporting the cities with other projects
and are building capacity of city engineers and administrators.

 This mission is perfectly aligned with National Urban Development Strategy to urbanize tier
2 and 3 cities and reduce the pressure and migration towards metro cities.

What has been few key achievements

 Smart city mission was introduced in 2015, and since then the 100 smart cities has floated
tenders worth Rs. 382.07 billion and projects worth Rs 101.16 1 billion are completed in the
100 cities.

 Identification and embracing City cultural heritage and developing in similar lines. The cities
which have rich cultural heritage have revived their heritage and has built along it. Eg. Is
Varanasi and Ujjain.

 Major support to traffic and transportation. The Smart cities aided the traffic department in
execution of State of art Intelligent traffic management system and ICCC which is improving
the traffic situation in many cities.

 Capacity building of Manipal Corporations and line departments.

Few Challenges

 Management of asset created. The O&M of developed asset has become a challenge as it
involves high recurring expenditure and line departments who are responsible of O&M of
respective services are not ready to bear such O&M cost. Eg. Is Underground electrification.

 Sustainability of SPV as land monetization or other revenue sources have not realized. If the
SPC was suppose to have a recurring income from capitalization of land assets and through
share from municipal corporation enhanced revenue. But this has not been able to realize
because of many land dispute matter and limited or no municipal revenue enhancement.

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Source: Mission Director, Smart Cities, MoHUA, Video Conference May 2019,