About Smart Cities

About Smart Cities

What is Smart City?

The first question is what is meant by a ‘smart city’. The answer is, there is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people. The conceptualisation of Smart City, therefore, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. A smart city would have a different connotation in India than, say, Europe. Even in India, there is no one way of defining a smart city.
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Smart City Features

Some typical features of comprehensive development in Smart Cities are described below.
1. Promoting mixed land use in area based developments–planning for ‘unplanned areas’ containing a range of compatible activities and land uses close to one another in order to make land use more efficient. The States will enable some flexibility in land use and building bye-laws to adapt to change;
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Financing of Smart Cities

1. Water and sewerage provision; Waste water treatment
2. Primary education and health care
3. Slum upgradation
4. Local roads and public transport
5. Solid waste management and sanitary landfills <%--
6. Maintenance of cremation and burial grounds no one way of defining a smart city.--%>
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Special Purpose Vehicle ( SPV )

The implementation of the Mission at the City level will be done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the purpose. The SPV will plan, appraise, approve, release funds, implement, manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the Smart City development projects. Each smart city will have a SPV which will be headed by a full time CEO and have nominees of Central Government, State Government and ULB on its Board. The States/ULBs shall ensure that, (a) a dedicated and substantial revenue stream is made available to the SPV so as to make it self-sustainable and could evolve its own credit worthiness for raising additional resources from the market and (b) Government contribution for Smart City is used only to create infrastructure that has public benefit outcomes. The execution of projects may be done through joint ventures, subsidiaries, public-private partnership (PPP), turnkey contracts, etc suitably dovetailed with revenue streams.
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About Smart Cities Mission :

The Smart Cities Mission will be operated as a Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) and the Central Government proposes to give financial support to the Mission to the extent ofRs. 500 crores over five years i.e. on an average Rs. 100 crore per year. An equal amount,on a matching basis, will have to be contributed by the State/ULB; therefore, Rupees1000 crore of Government/ULB funds will be available for Smart Cities development.

The objective of the Smart Cities Mission is to promote cities that providecore infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainableenvironment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions. The focus is on sustainable and inclusivedevelopment and the idea is to look at compact areas, create a replicable model which willact like a light house to other aspiring cities.

The purpose of the Smart Cities Mission is to drive economic growth and improvethe quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology,especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes. Area-based development will transformexisting areas (retrofit and redevelop), including slums, into better planned ones, therebyimproving liveability of the whole City. New areas (Greenfield) will be developed around citiesin order to accommodate the expanding population in urban areas.

The implementation of the Mission at the City level will be done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the purpose. The SPV will plan, appraise, approve, release funds, implement, manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the Smart City development projects. Each Smart City will have a SPV which will be headed by a full time CEO and have nominees of Central Government, State Government and ULB on its Board. The SPV will be a limited company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 at the city-level, in which the State/UT and the ULB will be the promoters having 50:50 equity shareholding. The distribution of funds under the Scheme will be as follows:

  1. 1. 93% project funds.
  2. 2. 5% Administrative and Office Expenses (A&OE) funds for state/ULB (towards preparation of SCPs and for PMCs, Pilot studies connected to area-based developments and deployment and generation of Smart Solutions, capacity building as approved in the Challenge and online services).
  3. 3. 2% A&OE funds for MoUD (Mission Directorate and connected activities/structures, Research, Pilot studies, Capacity Building, and concurrent evaluation).


New Ranking Framework for Smart Cities

This formula considers the city performance in the areas of (a) ‘project implementation’, (b) ‘fund transfer cum utilization ’, and (c) mandatory compliances. Project Implementation performance is given 60 percent weightage, performance under fund transfer / utilization is given 28 percent weightage and mandatory compliances are given a weightage of 12 percent. Cities can get a maximum score of 100 marks.
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