Citizens Consultation for the Smart Cities Mission
On 25 June 2015, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Smart Cities Mission to enable the holistic development of Indian cities. This bold new initiative under the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) aims to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. According to MoUD, the core elements of a Smart City include: adequate water and electricity supply, suitable sanitation and solid waste management, efficient public transportation, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, e-governance with citizen participation, sustainable environment, and safety and security of citizens with health and education for all. These objectives are proposed to be attained through a judicious mix of retrofitting, redevelopment and greenfield development.
Citizen consultation is an important pillar of the first phase of the Smart Cities Mission. The Ministry encouraged local governments to engage citizens as they worked on their city’s Smart City Proposal, and recommended MyGov as the core platform for citizen consultation. Municipal governments supplemented their online MyGov activities with meetings, discussions, and other public interactions in their respective cities.
MyGov facilitated citizen consultation for the Smart Cities Mission in two stages. During the first round, it offered cities a range of citizen consultation methodologies, such as discussion forums, tasks, online polls, public talks, and blogs. These tools served as a catalyst for citizens to participate in the Smart Cities Mission and the competition, also known as the India Smart Cities Challenge, and offer suggestions for the development of their city.
During the second round of the Smart Cities Mission, municipal authorities from the shortlisted cities used MyGov to collect suggestions from citizens on their vision for a Smart City to incorporate these into draft proposals. Of the 98 cities, 57 put the draft proposals online for further comments and inputs from the public. Overall, the proposals received a total of 1,42,895 comments.
The 98 cities adopted a range of measures to encourage citizen engagement. Municipalities reached out to young citizens by visiting schools and colleges to educate them about the Mission. Municipal corporations used popular social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the mission. Still others created dedicated websites with detailed updates on progress. SMS campaigns, voice message campaigns, and airtime on radio channels helped expand a municipality’s reach. Many cities even created free Wi-Fi hotspots in crowded areas so that people could access Internet and submit suggestions. Advertisements in newspapers, pamphlets, hoardings, and the MyGov app played a significant role in making the Smart City Mission a nationwide phenomenon.
The Smart Cities Mission – MyGov collaboration is an unprecedented exercise in urban planning, which has transformed planning from a top-down centralized activity into a democratic consultative process, taking the citizens’ perspective as the foundation stone on which the city plan is built. MyGov looks forward to partnering with more cities and citizens in the subsequent rounds of the Smart Cities Mission play its part in developing Smart Cities across India.
– Gaurav Dwivedi,
CEO, MyGov
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Centralized Sewage Treatment Plants (CSTPs) cost a lot more than de-centralized ones (DSTPs) due to long distance underground sewer pipelines which increase in size exponentially as distance increases. They also cost more for maintanance, waste treated water while DSTPs can re-use precious water for tertiary use and industrial purposes. DSTPs are clean, breed no mosquitos/ insects, don’t pollute ground water, etc. I can give all advantages if contacted. So, Smart cities should use DSTP strategy
Dear Sir,
We are a tropical country hence we have ample sun light through the year. As a part of power saving measure, i suggest you to adopt concept of day light saving which all western countries follow to become smart city.
All local/state/central government office to work from morning 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, to save energy. Further, all the govt employee travel at different time then the general public hours less traffic which will lead to huge saving of time and energy.
You can even provide this website in all 20 official language or almost all languages, so that citizen could express themselves in better way and give logical suggestion, instead of only in two language, as people do access this website from all strata and are eager to suggest
Smart City Belagavi must have a priority for planting trees to increase healthy environment and to decrease pollution, plus Solar Power System at household rooftop system should be given higher weight as it’ll help to produce lots of energy, roads should be made of good quality to last longer, Gov shall make use of open empty land for various purposes, Cutting of trees should be stopped as it’s resulting in global warming and increasing pollution and reducing oxygen.
Smart cities must have
1. clean environment,
2. pollution free core areas (city centers),
3. clean rivers & lakes in the middle of cities
4. hills and natural biodiversity preserved and maintained
5. identified areas for natural spots where there is no human interference within each 5 sq km area
6. separate tracks for ambulances, emergency services and eco-friendly non-polluting vehicles
7. must avoid end to end cementing of roads & small lanes. small lanes also must have foot paths
all the city cross roads must be with crossroads and not" triangle or "y shape " crossings, does all these requires central govt to announce s smart city, all local city municipal councils and under the urban town planning schemes can be easily carried out, at no extra cost . All municipal corporations otherwise also collects the development charges from all the builders before passing their plan and giving permission.
among the cluster of several residential plots, provision for small market
This will save sizably on electricity consumption . 12.all govt and the urban /rural health centers must have a data base of all the citizens and well recorded health conditions with follow up check ups for regular and ongoing treatment.and the copy of it must be connected with the health dept. Thru the voters cards, adhar cards . At least few of it , if started we can take step towards approaching towards the smart city.One more important issue all the residential areas must be classified only
11. Similarly in country like ours where almost 8-9 months scorching heat is there an every commercial building, residential buildings radiate lot of heat in the atmosphere, thugh may be taking some benefit of green building,, all the builders must use -perlite- the volcanic ash , not the fly ash from boilers. This fly ash is natural product very rich with lot of minerals, and best hot and cold insulating, water proof, best strength when used along with the cement and both for RCC and outside
8. Municipal corporations, banks, electricity payment offices must work 24 hrs , if people wants to pay bills why they are punished to stand in queues for hours? 9. In tru concept of smart city and present govt stress so much need to implement everything online , than the minimum speed of internet must be min 1100 kbps or 10 mbps. And not writing upto 2mbps, or govt should not give licences to any such service providers , and yes wherever possible cable less services, or wi-fi. i know there are
4.similarly the public transport services information can also be available on the public information kiosk. 5.we think only if everything i online than only it can be sart city is totally wrong thinking. Everyone must have free computers, mobiles for uc services, there is always a fear of cheating in online , it is not a foolproof system. 6. The traffic signals and the street lights can be fixed with inbuilt solar system where the solar panel is mounted on the light fixtures as it’s top cover a