The announcement of the 100 Smart
Cities concept is one of the visionary moves of the new NDA Government in
India. While there is no definition of a smart city (articulated more to
support increased urbanization), one may assume that a typical smart city would
have high level social and industrial infrastructure with a robust digital
backbone. A smart city may have metro rail and highway connectivity with
international airports to boot. It would have certain pre-existing core
industrial and commercial activity that can be leveraged for expansion and
diversification. It is not, therefore, surprising that Tier 2 and 3 cities like
Visakhapatnam, Madurai, Kurnool, Nagpur and Cuttack, to quote a few examples,
would be qualifying as smart cities.
Clearly, development of smart cities
requires not only a more precise definition of the concept but also a more
clear pathway for execution. It is for this reason that the Union Budget envisages
an allocation of Rs 7600 crores in the Union Budget 2014-15 to develop a
clearer grasp over the concept and make a start. With only 6 months to go
before the next budget, it looks as if the States are yet to make specific
smart city strategies. It is hoped that the development planning exercise
will be specific to each city selected as a qualifying city (rather than as a
generic concept for all the cities). Specific studies will recognize the
peculiar needs of each city in terms of geo-economic and demographic profiles
and develop plans that would be ready to execute. This blog post suggests a few
ways to lead the smart city concept to execution but more importantly touches
upon the need to develop a smart village concept as well.
Smart villages
It is well-known that nearly 70
percent of India's population still lives in India's 600,000 villages. There
can, therefore, be no equitable development unless the villages are also
brought into the smart paradigm. If 100 smart cities are seen as the magnets to
spur overall urban development, probably the country would need about 20,000
smart villages in the first phase. Smartness is the ability to be contextually
efficient and effective. Given that villages are dependent on natural resources
for day to day living smart villages must aim at leveraging technology for more
efficient and effective use of technologies and generating surpluses that can
be sold in the urban centres to generate rural wealth.
The smart villages must aim at being
the nodal hubs for the balance 580,000 villages. While each of the 600,000
villages must be covered by total sanitation, drinking water and housing for
every family, the smart villages must have certain additional capabilities.
Typically, each smart village must be strategically selected to support a
cluster of villages in an accessible distance; it should be the centre of a
cluster of villages in a 5 kilometre radius. It should have a 3 tier school
structure to support universal education, a multi-utility agricultural resource
complex to support smart agriculture and a healthcare infrastructure to provide
life support systems. The agricultural resource centre would be the core of a
smart village.
Smart agriculture
India has fairly long monsoon season,
extending between 4 and 5 months in different regions. What is unpredictable,
however, are the start and end dates as well as the curves of ramp-up
extension and ramp-down withdrawal, impacting the seeding, sowing and reaping
phases. In addition, unseasonal rains and floods caused by the low pressure
areas in the long coast line cause damage to standing crops and produce. As all
the villages are solely and wholly dependent on agriculture, the smart villages
must emerge as the protective umbrella for the larger village clusters as
agricultural resource centres. In addition, they must lead a smart agriculture
revolution across the villages.
Each smart village must have a
multi-utility Agriculture Resource Complex (ARC) comprising a meteorological
centre, fertiliser centre, a pesticide centre, a seeds centre, a threshing
centre, a drying centre, a testing centre, a grain warehouse, a crop planning
centre, a logistics centre, a leasing centre (for tractors, trailers, vehicles
and implements), a grameen bank, a telecommunications centre, and a
crisis management centre. The ARC in each smart village would be the key to
develop and implement smart agriculture strategies in the villages covered by
each smart village. All the ARCs would be digitally connected not only among
themselves but with leading agricultural universities.
Smart industry
Just as smart agriculture is the core
to wealth generation for sustainable rural development (all towns and cities),
smart industry is the core to wealth generation to sustainable urban development.
The development of smart cities must be accompanied by a smart industry
strategy as well. Smart industry policy must incorporate strategies to develop
custom-built industrial parks that can can cater to the entire value chain of
each industry. Typically, the parks should have equal share reserved for
end-products and component makers. Even if a component supplier is centrally
located and well-established elsewhere there is no reason why a finishing
operation cannot be decentralized locally. Bharat Forge may produce and rough
machine all of its forgings for India in Pune but can set up the fine machining
facilities wherever major automobile firms are.
Smart industry policy also involves
creation of the entire commercial and governmental infrastructure that is
required to serve the industrial park through single window clearances and
commercialisation. Smart industry policy should aim at crating product-specific
logistics and transportation hubs and parking terminals (for both cargo and
people) and container terminals for mulltimodal transportation (of incoming and
outgoing goods). Most parks are developed only for bare factory requirements
and not for the whole series of support centres and hubs that are mentioned
herein. New industrial parks in smart cities should, therefore, be
conceptualised with foresight and industry collaboration.
Smart residence
As much as industry is important,
civic life is equally important. Indian residential market has been
progressively moving out of the reach of the lower and middle income groups,
essentially due to escalation of land prices and construction costs. The
efforts by the governments to develop low income houses in far flung areas has
increased the distance between the workplace and homespace for vast tracts of
workforce. The affordable homes conceived by certain reputed builders, such as
Mahindra and Tata, are too few and isolated to make an impact. As the
Governments set about building smart cities and smart villages it is time to do
away with the concepts of economic isolation that have taken root over the
years.
Indian cities as they historically
evolved had little planning for integrated residential habitats. From Mumbai to
New Delhi and from Chandigarh to New Raipur, one can see multiple models, none
of them fully thought through for a sustainable high quality living with
socio-economic integration. Alternative models do exist; the campus of the
Indian Institute of Technology Madras is a good example of harmonious housing
colonies with multiple templates co-existing. As the smart cities get
built, integrated planning of residential and commercial spaces would be
required. There is no reason for abandoning the weaker sections to isolated
existence and tardy development in the fringes. On the other hand, there is
every need to use the smart city and smart village as well as new capital
developments to integrate all sections of the population, socially and
economically.
Renewing the core
An important component of developing
the smart cities and villages is the renewal of the core. Any observation of
historical development indicates that civilisations developed on river banks,
sea coasts or hill valleys for good socio-economic reasons. While developing
smart cities and villages, efforts must be made to renew the core to retain
traditional advantages while injecting contemporary land use planning. Just as
land pooling is being planned for construction of a new capital in the
Vijayawada region, building pooling can be considered for renewal of old urban
centres. This must focus on unplanned, impoverished, dilapidated and bottleneck
parts of the urban centres to convert them into more vibrant zones which can
meet the needs of the coming decades.
An aerial view of any of the cities
identified as smart cities would reveal congested building clusters which are
not only partially constructed but are also unsafe. Yet they constitute
valuable property and the only means of security to the owners. A major
people's initiative would be required to achieve productive renewal of the
core. It is likely that a well conceived and apolitical plan in public-private
participation would help achieve the objectives. The renewal can be an
opportunity to create large horizontal free spaces for movement and parking
while going vertical for creating commercial and residential space. In the urban
renewal, care needs to be taken to avoid wall to wall packing of buildings, a
legacy or temptation to which even the world's greatest cities have succumbed.
Waves and ripples
Along with the identification and
renewal of a core, new zones must be created for expansion of smart city areas
from the available basic stages. There are two ways the development can be
effected; one as waves and the other as ripples. A wave form of development
starts from a developed core and moves towards an unexplored horizon. The
development of Hyderabad which proceeded from the core Ameerpet area to
Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Hitex City and now Gachi Bowli is an example of
wave development. The advantage of wave development is that the existing
connectivity options can be progressively extended while new enclaves get
developed. The disadvantage of wave development is that the constraints of a
previous development tend to impact the newer developments as the core is what
provides the basic development backbone.
The ripple development is based
on choosing new nodes far away from the core, and developing them towards one
another. The development of Bengaluru with new distant clusters like Sarjapur,
Whitefield, Peenya and Davanahalli serving as the four new clusters expanding
and rippling outwards from each of the new cores is an example. The advantage
of ripple development is that it enables a much larger canvas and a much faster
pace of development. The disadvantage is that it tends to be a connectivity
nightmare if people need to commute across work areas of one location and
residential areas of another location. Bengaluru is an example of both. As the
governments embark upon converting the existing cities into smart cities, the
need for orderliness and convenience cannot be ignored.
Managing expectations
It appears that development of
smart cities and smart villages could be at high land costs. The (already
costly) experience with the new capital of AP suggests the need for tempered
visions and calibrated communications. Farmers who have inherited the lands in
and around Vijayawada, and have been living in abject poverty thus far should
feel happy with the smart developments that fetch huge land values. On the
other hand, if they have already sold their land parcels months earlier for
small incremental appreciation to 'smart' people, then they may have
unknowingly skirted the once in a lifetime development opportunity. Media
reports suggest that this indeed could be the emerging story. Reports suggest
unprecedented spikes in the land prices in and around Vijayawada, expected as
the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh ever since the bifurcation of the AP
State a few months ago (and announced accordingly on September 4, 2014 in the
AP Legislative Assembly).
Other reports suggest that the
Governments would go in for joint development for the new capital with land
pooling with 40 percent share to the land owners and the skyscrapers getting
built free on the land on the basis that half the number of floors would go to
the Government with the balance half being retained by the developers for their
sale. This has a hidden high cost element while being low on visible
expenditure. The other alternative, possibly less speculative and more
cost-effective, is to limit new capital development to only clusters that have
government land and avoid private acquisition of land. Even if such clusters
are separated, top class road and metro rail connectivity can be ensured to
keep them networked. This could be a better model with each cluster focusing on
one specific part of governance.
Digital connectivity
An avowed objective of the NDA
government is digital integration. Smart cities as well as smart villages must
lead in this. Digital connectivity is more than wifi enablement or iPad deployment.
An ability to access information through a private device in any public spot is
only a battle half won. Digital connectivity must provide access to information
for all people at all places without having to resort to private devices.
Announcing arrival and departure times through mobile applications may be an
improvement over telephonic enquiry service but does not represent real and
total digital connectivity. Digital connectivity needs time to speak and time
to listen. The new Government has asked for people's suggestions on the
body to replace the Planning Commission. However, only few suggestions have
flown digitally while fewer have been analyzed. When digital universe is
opened up, time needs to be allotted to make use of the information highways
by all stakeholders.
Digital connectivity must facilitate
instantaneous access to desired information by public. This is enabled largely
by major upgrades in digitization of all activities starting from one digital
card for each individual to total digitization of all transactions. The Income
Tax department has demonstrated how several economic transactions can be
interlinked with one PAN card number. The experience can be more profound if,
for example, the labour market and employment market are fully digitised with
access of real time information on vacancies and candidates. A national
information exchange could be a national repository of public information with
a dedicated search engine. Even in today's times, ministers cannot be reached
by general public. In a true digitised state, digital outreach (as organized
for the Prime Minister on the Teachers' Day) would be a daily feasibility.
There should be digital highways that carry the citizens' pains and pleasures
to the administrators and ministers anytime.
Smart India Authority
The plans that are being laid out are
so great with development aspirations all across India and with investment
needs so huge that the development paradigms need to be created carefully.
Centre could enable a centralised model based on central and global
institutional funding or allow the States pursue their own models of smart development.
Whichever route is taken, the development paradigms must be empathetic to the
needs of the poor and downtrodden as the smart city and village concepts are
the one last chance to bring people onto the developmental mainstream. Whether
a new body to replace the Planning Commission takes shape or not, a new Smart
India Authority seems to be definitely required so that the smart visions and
raised expectations are aligned with empathetic strategies and invigorated
execution.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 8,
2014
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