Smart City has different definitions for different countries, United States definition for smart city won’t be similar to the Indian definition. For India definition of Smart city is a city which provides a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean environment, core infrastructure and should be economically strong enough. Smart City should boost economic growth and improve the quality of life of citizens. It should be advanced in smart technologies for easier life. The total 100 cities have been distributed amongst states and UTs of India.
Need of Smart City Mission?
According to the census of 2011 more than 30 population if India lives in cities, currently around 66% of GDP comes from cities. These numbers are increasing rapidly. It is expected that more than 40% of the Indian population will be living in cities and GDP contribution would be around 75% by the year 2030. As per these data cities in India are very important in every aspect. Hence redesigning of the city structure is very important, Reason is that still most of the Indian cities are not smart enough to the majority of people. most cities don’t offer even living space for poor people. For example, people sleeping on the footpath is very common in Mumbai city, Environment condition in Delhi is becoming deadly. Kolkata is very crowded and traffic is major issue in the city. To toggle these problems Smart city mission is introduced. The smart city will offer sustainable living to every single person in the city, It will attract investors, it will help to boost the growth of the city. So, these were some key-points which proves that smart city mission is necessary for India.
Smart City Features
Some basic features should be there in a smart city which is as mentioned below,
- Housing opportunity to all people living in city.
- Creating walkable localities to reduce congestion in selected areas, control pollution, boost economy, promote interaction and ensure the security of the citizens.
- Developing and maintaining open spaces – parks, playground development to enhance the quality of life of people.
- Variety of transport option – Metro, monorail, BRTs, Ring road like extra transportation option reduces dependency on a single transportation system.
- Making Governance friendly to people – It will help to stop corruption and will create transparency, Making most of the services online is one of the steps to make governance easy to people.
- Conserving Unique identity of the city- It will help to maintain speciality of the city, Such as health, education, furniture, cuisine, textile, production, dairy Etc.
- Smart solution for infrastructure and services– To provide easy and cheap services to people and make infrastructure vulnerable to disasters.
- Efficient Land use- To change building bye-laws according to the need of the city and use variety of land more efficiently.
Selection of Smart Cities
Selected Smart cities
Funding for Smart City Mission
Smart cities will be financed by the central government under Centrally sponsored scheme (CSS). The government will give every smart city 100 crores per year means 48000 crores for the whole project for 5 years. An equal amount of money will be contributed by the respective state government. Hence, Project cost increases to 1 lakh crores.
93% of funds will be distributed directly to the project execution, 5% will be distributed for administrative and office expenses remaining 2% will be distributed ministry of the urban developer (MOUD). Smart city mission will be monitor under central, state and city level.
