Indore to become a smart city by 2021!

Among the 100 cities chosen to be a part of the Smart City Mission, 20 will be ready by 2021, according to officials. Indore will be a part of the cities which will be developed by 2021 and Indoris can’t wait to see what’s in store from them. Similar cities will then act as a benchmark for the remaining 80 cities to be developed.

The aim behind the Mission is to make the Indore more citizen friendly, technologically savvy and to provide self sustainable urban habitation. Under the technological aspect, the goal is to implement CCTV cameras, promote e-commerce and e-governance on a massive scale, in order to provide more seamless day to day activities of citizens. Other heads of the project aim to mobilize and integrate citizen management and city planning. In addition to that, ICCCs (integrated command and control centers) will be set up in all the cities which will enable the government to monitor progress in real time and the systems can be later used for city management.

The other cities in the developmental mission include but are not limited to- Pune, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Bhubneshwar, Surat, Ahemdabad, Kochi, Coimbatore, Ludhiana and Chennai. They were chosen after a round of Smart City Challenge that took place in 2016, which is a two stage process. The process involved city planners to create proposals and models to be implemented across their city.

Though the cities to be developed were chosen quite a few years back, each city will be given a window of five years to complete all ongoing projects. A problem that plagues this process is that the involvement of various different sectors and industries may stall work and extend the proposed dates. Another issue is the time that it takes to get permissions from all local government offices and board of directors, which can take several months. Officials, however remain optimistic and confirm that the development will be completed by 2021, as planned earlier.

Indoris are eagerly waiting to see the development take place, though it may cause traffic diversions and pose problems for a while, the end result will be reaped and welcomed by all.