NEW DELHI: India should look at smaller and comparable global cities and not giants such as New York or London while executing its smart-city programme, a study has said.
Policy makers should look at cities like as Medellin in Colombia or Casablanca in Morocco, whose economies are smaller and compare better with the Indian cities, American think tank Brookings Institution has said in its report titled ‘Building smart-cities in India’. The report will be made public today.
“Typically we look into markets in New York, London, Barcelona or Amsterdam when looking at smart city interventions. But, the issue is in many ways they are not apple to apple comparisons. These cities have much different economic and developmental traits,” said Adie Tomer, one of the authors of the report.
The report compares three smart-city picks — Vizag, Ajmer and Allahabad — with nine metropolises across Asia, Africa and Latin America having similar demographic and economic traits.
India plans to have 100 such cities and will spend around Rs 9,6000 crore over the next five years on the programme. Thirty-three of the cities have been chosen, the remaining would be picked by 2019.
The idea behind the study was to show the minimum level of amenities a city needed to be turned into smart city, report’s lead author Dr Shamika Ravi told HT.
The report says that though the nine metros – chosen from 300 through clustering technique–are relatively poor when compared to cities like London or New York the Indian cities lag behind them.
{{/usCountry}}The report says that though the nine metros – chosen from 300 through clustering technique–are relatively poor when compared to cities like London or New York the Indian cities lag behind them.
{{/usCountry}}For instance, the per capita GDP of Vizag, the most developed of the three Indian cities, of around $2000 is lower than that of Alexandria.
There is a yawning gap when it comes to services like electricity and mobile phone. India may be world’s third largest smartphone market but its 70-80% mobile phone adoption rate is way behind a 90% rate for Brazilian and African cities surveyed in the report.