The roadmap to smarter cities : Hindustan Times

The PM’s three-pronged urban reforms are aimed at boosting development, but for them to be successful, hurdles such as land acquisition need to be overcome

The three-pronged urban reforms drive launched by prime minister Narendra Modi on July 25 is expected to provide a muchneeded fillip for infrastructure development across India.

Launching The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transfor mation ( AMRUT), Smart Cities Mission, and Housing for All (Urban) schemes, Modi said that residents will now get an opportunity to decide how smart cities should be built, rather than developers. “This is the first time in India that we are planning to develop 60 cities simultaneously. The decision to make cities smart will not be taken by governments but by the people of the city, the local administration,” Modi said. “Urbanisation should be viewed as an opportunity and urban centres should be viewed as growth engines.”

While 500 cities will be developed under the AMRUT scheme, 100 smart cities will come up over the next five years. Under the Housing for All scheme, 2 crore houses will be constructed in urban areas in the next seven years. The smart city and AMRUT projects will draw 48,000 crore and 50,000 crore, respectively, in central grants.

Smart cities will be selected through a competition, a mechanism aimed at ending the topdown approach, l eading to people-centric urban development. The schemes have been prepared not just by the government, but involved perhaps the biggest consultation exercise taken by the Union government, involving all stakeholders and examining global best practices, Modi said.

Infrastructure g rowth will be key. Investments of more than ` 3 lakh crore planned in the next five years under AMRUT, Housing for All ( Urban) and t he Smart Cities Mission, will provide a strong impetus for growth in more than 250 allied indust ries. The goal of building more than 20 million homes for the urban poor will help bridge t he demand- supply gap i n af fordable housing, s ay s David Walker, MD of SARE Homes.

The government, however, needs to urgently address land acquisition and approval issues, create a single-window clearance system and curb the plethora of taxes on real estate development so that tight deadlines can be adhered to. If these barriers are eliminated, public and private developers could join hands in making the government’s urban development mission a ground reality, adds Walker.

Individual cities will need to leverage these three schemes in a coordinated manner. No city will ever be 100% smart, unless its citizens are provided

quality water, sanitation, solid waste management, the key focus areas for AMRUT and decent housing for the urban poor, which is the focus for the Housing for All programme, says Arindam Guha, senior director, Deloitte in India.