The Smart Cities Mission (SCM), launched on 25 June 2015, is a joint effort of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and all state and union territory governments
Smart cities are transforming cities into their future attractive for the citizens living in them. People are the core of the city and resources must be worked around to help them live an improved lifestyle. By definition, “it is a city, which is liveable, sustainable and has a thriving economy offering multiple opportunities to its people to pursue their diverse interests.”
The Mission aims “to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to smart outcomes,”
One of the main goals of the smart city is to ensure that the cities are developed in a more sustainable and human manner. Their overall policies focus on
- Adequate water supply.
- Assured electricity supply
- Sanitation, including solid waste management.
- Efficient urban mobility and public transport.
- Affordable housing, especially for the poor.
- Robust IT connectivity and digitalization.
- Good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation.
- Sustainable environment.
- Safety and security of citizens.
- Health and education.
- Jabalpur has introduced the concept of liability at improving the quality of life. This enables the life of its citizens to drastically improve.
- This includes improving the street and public spaces, health and education, areas of recreation, and areas of historical significance.
- Resources in the city have been recycled and reused to help curb the decreasing resources and global impact.
- From improving house monitoring to increasing accessibility to the historical area of the city.
- Sustainability is becoming a key part of every project. With the increase in global climates, decrease in the air quality, frequent floods, declining biodiversity. The plant trees drive in Tumakuru encourages students to think more green.
- Sustainability has become a part of every government project. Of what has gone right or wrong in the city. The ‘Sustainability indicators under EOLI and the Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework (CSCF) are tools formulated to understand a city’s performance on different dimensions of sustainable development in the Indian context.
- Starting at Agra, the 4 micro skill development offers training and development. It offers skills for women to improve their livelihood. This helps improve their business conduct which provides the ability to improve their skills.
- Sustained Economic activity and skills are key to improving the lives of people. Generating income through the upgrading of the city infrastructure.
- Areas like Tirupati and Thiruvananthapuram are being nurtured with skills and digital training. There has also been a development in buildings, roads and CCTV.
- The city of Coimbatore has restored its lakes, developing lakefronts, fountains, roads and building an amphitheatre. The city has also been using robotic machines (called Bandicoot V 2.0) to clean and unclog manholes and septic tanks, therefore completely avoiding manual scavenging.
Without a doubt, the smart city mission comes with enormous challenges like construction progress monitoring, material tracking, and safety. With the right technology and skill in place, fulfilling the objective of the mission will just be a matter of time and effort. However, it is impotent to provide a healthy and improved life for India.
Studies have shown the lack of project and implementation of resources due to the lack of managerial, financial, and technical abilities. Therefore with the appropriate management smart cities will soon become a reality.
