Smart Cities: How can we achieve our dreams

When Ministry of Urban Development of the Government of India unveiled it plan to build 100 Smart cities (revised to 109) in 2015 with a budgetary support of 15 billion US$, it held the hopes of every citizen of this country high. The original plan was to go for urban renewal and retrofitting of existing mid-sized cities, and develop them as satellite towns which are filled with sustainable infrastructure, citizen friendly services and a cobweb of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. But is longing for such rebuildings realistic? Or is it too big a dream for our Republic?

Accounting for various challenges that implementing the Smart Cities Mission on its full throttle will require a multifarious analysis because there are few problems which are peculiar to India. Focusing narrowly on city-centric urban planning is a shortcoming of the present approach. This is because such smart cities are envisaged to serve a much more wider regional area and resorting to such narrowly driven approach would create similar shortcomings as we are facing in the present times. Rather than such narrow plans, a more encompassing regional plans need to be framed and worked upon, because as expected, in the long run, such smart cities would transform into a parent town for adjoining areas and if not planned accordingly, it would end up sabotaging the mission objectives of sustainability.

Secondly, economic viability of developing such network of smart cities is crucial for their long term continuance, as it would require around two decades to build a full-fledged urban arrangement. It is but obvious that financing such large network of Greenfield cities cannot be sufficed by public expenditure by the Government, hence it would essentially require a much incentivized model of financing which would include both local capital markets and external commercial borrowings (ECBs). Hopefully, a renewed institutional arrangement of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) would add a flavour to the capital inflow, but it would require much more facilitation on the long run.

Thirdly, lagging behind in the availability of a well-knit ICT infrastructure infused with the latest technology inputs into the system can sabotage the whole mission objective of the SCM. Quintessential technologies such as an arrayed optical fibre network, 5^th generation mobile spectrum, seamless data services at home and offices including some inches of Internet of Things (IOT) would form the basis of such smart cities adding to their 'smartness'. Definitely, India is presently lagging much behind the availability of essential resources that are required to adopt and apply such services.

Finally, lack of the much-required urban mobility with a seamless transport services both private and public would create a big hurdle in developing such smart cities. This is the reason why smart cities across the world rank urban transport facilities as the most important infrastructure in building the city. And as evident in India, high population density, lack of adequate resources, low per-capita income and poor urban planning will create a big time hurdle in redeeming this dream of smart cities.

Keeping the aforementioned impediments aside, there are certain positives that make us hopeful about the future of this mission. Renewed foreign interest in developing partnerships to build the cities with cheap lending conditions like Japanese interest in building Benaras on the lines of Kyoto with its cheap line of credit is definitely a silver lining. Moreover Govt's focus in infusing capital investment through REITs and Infrastructure finance funds may pave the way for long-term capital which is necessary for such development. Cleaning such regulatory arrangement by bringing in more transparency and accountability through legislations like RERA and GST would definitely facilitate the implementation of smart cities mission. And finally, formulating schemes like Digital India, building partnerships with Google, Facebook, Tesla etc. To build digital infrastructure of India will fill the technology deficit that is prevalent in India. Let us hope, that India fulfills this much essential dream of building this arrayed network of smart cities otherwise India will face its worst urban crisis in the century to come due to urban fatigue that is building high riding on India's high population growth.