Smart Cities

In the year 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared to smarten up 100 cities of the nation under ‘Smart Cities Mission’ it was a matter of concern to get funds for developing old cities as per the standards of Smart City but ‘Raipur’ is about to fulfil the concept of PM Modi’s ‘Smart City’, said Urban Administration Minister Amar Agrawal . He was addressing the inaugural function of three-day national summit on ‘Smart City’ here on Wednesday. Welcoming the dignitaries, he said that experience and best professional practices of...

Five months after Greater Chennai Corporation issued a recruitment notice, the civic body has appointed two key office-bearers of Chennai Smart City Ltd (CSCL). The corporation has appointed Raj Cherubal chief executive officer of CSCL, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the execution of the T Nagar smart city project, civic body officials said. Cherubal founded urban transportation infrastructure planning agency Chennai City Connect. Greater Chennai Corporation deputy commissioner (works) K S Kandasamy named Harish Kumar as company secretary of CSCL. The civic body is yet to appoint the chief financial officer...

Proposal by iDeCK tries to strike a balance between modernising infrastructure while preserving heritage. The city Corporation’s draft Smart City proposal with projects worth Rs.1,505 crore will come up for the council’s approval on Friday. The proposal prepared by Bengaluru-based consultancy Infrastructure Development Corporation (Karnataka) Limited (iDeCK) tries to strike a balance between modernising the city’s infrastructure while preserving its heritage structures. The proposals come under two broad heads — Area-based development and Pan city development — with projects under the former getting a bulk of the funds. Some of the major projects...

Digital India initiatives and schemes by the government like Aadhaar, digital lockers and computerisation of land records, are gaining momentum in the country and playing a major role in the smart cities mission, said P.P. Chaudhary, Minister of State, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. He was speaking at the inaugural session of the 4th edition of the Smart Cities Summit here. China is the country partner at the summit. Aiming to take the government’s smart cities initiative to the next level, over 1,500 global and national policymakers, financiers and...

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and global business process management and services corporation, Genpact Ltd. (G) today announced the launch of a Global Center of Excellence in Jaipur, India. The new partnership serves as part of Cisco’s larger Lighthouse City project, a global initiative designed to deploy next-generation cloud-based technology in cities, set to directly impact citizens and society. Smart City Technology The city of Jaipur will gain access to Cisco’s global network and channel program capabilities, which Genpact says will help the city benefit from economic and social transformation as...

With national capital region grappling with heavy smog, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu recently strongly pitched for keeping environmental aspects in mind while framing smart city plans. Stressing that the severe pollution level in the NCR region is due to neglect of environment over a long period of time, he said everybody needs to do “their bit” to tackle the situation. “We have to be cautious about the environmental aspect also (in smart cities). Environment and development must go hand in hand. If you neglect environment what will happen you have the example...

The Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd and the city corporation held a meeting on Friday to seek opinion on the smart city proposal and also form various working groups. A senior corporation officer told TOI that the meeting was mainly held to form working groups for lake restoration and renovation, traffic movement, infrastructure planning, parks and open spaces and non-motorized transport.”The representatives were shown a power point presentation of the proposal and opinions were sought on the project. Very soon, tenders would be called for these...