30 new cities picked for Smart Cities Mission, Cities announced on Friday
30 new cities were announced for Smart Cities Mission. It was a celebration in all the 20 cities on January 28 last year when the government announced the first list of “Smart Cities”. As of now it was not such a big event on Friday when names of 30 new cities were announced.
Capital cities of Kerala, Gujarat, Bihar, Uttrakhand, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Mizoram, Sikkim and the new capital of Chhattisgarh Naya Raipur, were among 30 urban areas which were selected to be developed as smart cities.
Rae Bareli which falls under Congress chief’s parliamentary constituency, could not make it to the list. Hundred cities are to be chosen for the Smart Cities Mission. Till now 90 have been chosen, 60 were selected last year.
Official progress reports of works being undertaken by the companies set up to implement Smart Cities project in only 18 months look impressive but million plus cities such as Delhi, Faridabad and Chennai have enormous infrastructure deficiencies and require huge funds to convert their area as “Smart”. Developing few pockets in such big cities do not bring any striking change.
Smaller cities like Udaipur, Kakinada, Karnal, Gangtok, Dharamshala, Tirupati or Vellore will show smarter results than the big cities.
Top 15 New Smart Cities
| Rank | City | State/UT |
| 1 | Trivendrum | Kerala |
| 2 | Naya Raipur | Chhattisgarh |
| 3 | Rajkot | Gujarat |
| 4 | Amaravati | Andhra Pradesh |
| 5 | Patna | Bihar |
| 6 | Karimnagar | Telangana |
| 7 | Muzaffarpur | Bihar |
| 8 | Puducherry | Puducherry |
| 9 | Gandhinagar | Gujarat |
| 10 | Srinagar | J & K |
| 11 | Sagar | MP |
| 12 | Karnal | Haryana |
| 13 | Satna | MP |
| 14 | Bengaluru | Karnataka |
| 15 | Shimla | Himachal |
There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people. The conceptualization of Smart City, therefore, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. A smart city would have a different connotation in India than, say, Europe. Even in India, there is no one way of defining a smart city.
The picture of a smart city can be represented by the four pillars of comprehensive development-institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure. This can be a long term goal and cities can work towards developing such comprehensive infrastructure incrementally, adding on layers of ‘smartness’.
