Smart Cities: Technological Upgrade Of Social Infrastructure

<p>To put it in a nutshell, smart city will have smart physical, social and economical infrastructure while ensuring the centrality of citizen in a sustainable environment, says Krishna Gupta<br><br>With the steady growth of population in India, we face a number of significant barriers that continues to hamper the development of physical and social infrastructure, thus holding India back from a revolutionary change in economy and development. This problem is aggravated by expert’s report, according to which the population of India will get nearly doubled by 2050. Therefore, we immediately require an exponential mechanism that can effectively handle the ever growing population rate and provide solutions to deploy employment and economic activities besides better quality of life.<br><br>In this context, Indian government came up with a convincing and powerful solution of Smart Cities that are intended to satiate the needs by offering economic and employment opportunities to its wide section of residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income level. The description of a smart city may vary person to person but according to me, in a wider perspective it is indubitably conceptualized and executed to develop the so required institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure and to attract professionals and investors around the globe.<br><br>Not only this but also the good quality infrastructure coupled with sanitation, high quality education, enhanced security, smooth mobility, entertainment and high speed interconnectivity will surely advocate entrepreneurs and professionals to establish and run their enterprise in an effective manner. Additionally, as per to the statistics the current urban population is around 31 per cent of the total population and it is contributing over 60 per cent of India’s GDP. It is expected that with the concept of smart cities urban India will contribute to 75 per cent of national GDP in next 15 years with the workforce of 270 million workers. Because of the very same reason they are referred as harbinger of economic growth and need to be operated carefully as they are critical to our economic development.<br><br>Now, since we are still a developing economy, we have the opportunity to choose the path of development we want to take. Clearly, we should take the low energy path, especially in view of environmental sustainability as well as in view of the fact that for becoming globally competitive we need to be efficient in terms of energy utilization. Similarly adequate availability of the required skills in the labour force is a necessary requirement for sustainability of a Smart City. Besides smart housing, high level health care, safety and security are the basic amenities expected for every resident.<br><br>Also a total of 98,000 crore has been approved by the Cabinet for development of 100 smart cities and rejuvenation of 500 other cities. However, managing and organizing urban space for augmented liveable standard has proven to be difficult over times due to accelerated rural to urban migration which again calls to administer the concept of Smart cities. Smart city plan must implement a comprehensive, supportive policy framework for new urbanization that establishes key, guiding principles and identifies the enablers like technology, financing and talent attraction as that will be crucial to the implementation of new, live-able and sustainable urban spaces.<br><br>To put it in a nutshell, smart city will have smart physical, social and economical infrastructure while ensuring the centrality of citizen in a sustainable environment. In this aim to transform urban and rural areas into smarter cities, a collaborative approach between government, industry and civil society is required to pave the way for attainment of this dream. When every individual (including professional, entrepreneurs and others) will help in developing nation then the utopia of India being a developed country will be achieved manifold faster as compared to now.<br><br><em>The author is founder &amp; CEO of Propterry.com.</em></p>