3 Stages to Build Smart Cities
“The idea of a smart city is to understand, control, monitor the resources and their consumption at every stage. ”
Smart Cities have been the buzzword since Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi announced the creation of 100 smart cities over the next couple of years. But do we really know what a smart city is? What are its key features? And how will it help in our day to day life? Thus, in our quest to address these topics, commonfloor organised a boardroom discussion, which brought realty stalwarts and representatives of consulting and research institutes under one platform.
Spearheading the discussion, Nirup Jayanth of Jurong Consultants said, “ Cities are huge resources for people, thus, it is a tedious job and a challenge for the authorities to manage the resources efficiently for people. Moreover, the idea of a smart city is to efficiently understand, control, monitor the resources and their consumption at every stage.”
He further elaborated on the three stages that are imperative for creating such cities. “The first stage is enablement, wherein the city needs to understand the several problems it faces through the use of technology such as sensors and measuring devices, etc to gather requisite information. In this, tech giants such as CISCO, Siemens, etc will have a major role to play. Stage 2 involves understanding and analysing the gathered information. And the 3rd stage involves responding to the information by using technology and thus becoming smart.”
Taking a different stance on the topic, Sanjay Ramanujam, CEO, BCIL said, “Step one is to evolve a set of matrix that can be used, as leaving it subjective will increase the fuzziness. There is also a dire need to evolve a minimum set of definitions in various areas such as energy, water and waste as the idea of smart is to efficiently manage public resources using information technology.”
Further, explaining what a smart city is, P.K Mishra, VP-Procurement, Salarpuria Sattva Group said, “smart cities are supposed to be ecologically sustainable with proper database integration. Also, these cities should create economic activity.”
The Way Forward: Addressing the challenges
Building smart cities is not an overnight job. There are several challenges that needs to be addressed. The first and foremost being the lack of clarity on how these cities will be build. In this context, “the process of creating a Master Plan which is of utmost importance has to be really worked upon,” opined representatives of Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS).
Bringing another major problem to the table, Irshad Ahmed, President, Irshads Property Matters, said, “the whole concept of Smart Cities is a novel and well-intended move by the government. However, it should involve all the key stakeholders of the sector at large.”
Reiterating and adding to this, Praveen Kumar, COO-Commercial & Retail, BREN Corporation said, “People participation in the planning process is also important.” Moreover, for efficient planning, involvement of local bodies is imperative, which he says are ‘understaffed and underskilled’.
Talking on the similar lines, Jayanth added, “Capacity building is a necessary step to build smart cities along with micro-level planning with technology in place.”
With a country of more than 1 billion individuals heading toward massive globalisation and urbanisation, the balance between resources and their optimisation requires an efficient plan. The solution – Smart Cities. Thus, the concept of smart city is definitely a step in the right direction. However, the real problem lies in tactfully addressing the major issues.
