Government of India launched Smart Cities Mission on 25 June 2015. The objective of Smart Cities Mission is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions. Some of the core infrastructure elements in a smart city would include 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, particularly women, children and the elderly and health and education.

Application of ‘Smart’ Solutions will enable cities to use technology, information and data to improve urban infrastructure and services. The Smart Cities Mission is meant to set examples that can be replicated both within and outside the Smart City, catalysing the creation of similar Smart Cities in various regions and parts of the country. Comprehensive development in this way will improve quality of life, create employment and enhance incomes for all, especially the poor and the disadvantaged, leading to inclusive Cities. The purpose of the Smart Cities Mission is 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.

The strategic components of the Smart Cities Mission are city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment) and city extension (Greenfield development) plus a Pan-city initiative in which Smart Solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city. Area-based development will transform existing areas (retrofit and redevelop), including slums, into better planned human settlements, thereby, improving livability of the whole cities. Development of well-planned and fully serviced new areas (greenfield) will be encouraged around cities in order to accommodate the rapidly expanding population in urban areas. Application of Smart Solutions will enable cities to use technology to improve infrastructure and services.

The Mission will cover 100 cities and its duration will be five years (2015-2020). The total number of 100 Smart Cities have been distributed among the States and UTs on the basis of an equitable criteria giving equal weightage to urban population of the State/UT and the number of statutory towns in the State/UT. The implementation of the Mission at the City level will be done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the purpose.

The Smart Cities Mission requires smart people who actively participate in governance and reforms. Citizen involvement is much more than a ceremonial participation in governance.  Smart people involve themselves in the definition of the Smart City, decisions on deploying Smart Solutions, implementing reforms, doing more with less and oversight during implementing and designing post-project structures in order to make the Smart City developments sustainable. The participation of smart people will be enabled by the SPV through increasing use of ICT, especially mobile-based tools.

For more details, see http://smartcities.gov.in/