Announcement of 20 Smart Cities early January to mark the high point of new urban sector initiatives
Urban
planning and development approaches set on a new course in 2015
Over
Rs.42,000 cr investment approved in basic urban infrastructure and affordable housing
Competition
among cities, gap analysis based comprehensive planning, objective resource
allocation introduced
The
New Year 2016 is set to be a landmark in the annuls of urban development in the
country with the announcement of first batch of 20 Smart Cities early next
month besides the new initiatives of the Union Government under new urban
missions launched this year taking effect.
Evaluation
of Smart City Plans of 97 cities in the second stage of ‘City Challenge’
competition is already in progress and the results will be announced shortly
marking a high point in promoting competition among cities for resource
allocation, the first of its kind.
The
Government has reset the parameters for urban planning in the year 2015 and has
approved an investment of about Rs.42,000 cr in 2015 for developing basic urban
infrastructure and for affordable housing alone. This includes Rs.19,170 cr for
improving infrastructure relating to water supply, sewerage networks, storm
water drains, urban transport and open spaces in 474 cities in 18 states under
Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), launched in
June this year.
Under
another flagship programme of Prime Minister’s Awas Yojana (Urban), an
investment of over Rs.22,000 cr has been approved in 2015 for construction of
4.25 lakh houses for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in 227 cities in 11
states.
In
the pursuit of enabling urban areas as more effective engines of high rate of
economic growth besides making them more livable, the Government has put an end
to ad-hocism in urban planning and resource allocation under new urban sector
initiatives.
Under
AMRUT, a detailed infrastructure gap analysis has been made mandatory for
formulating Service Level Improvement Plans (SLIP) for each of the mission
cities for allocation of central assistance from out of the five year kitty of
Rs.50,000 cr. Unlike in the past, urban local bodies and state governments have
been empowered to appraise and approve projects with the Ministry of Urban
Development completely withdrawing from the same.
Both
the urban ministries have selected cities for allocation of central assistance
based on objective criteria of total urban population and number of statutory
urban local bodies besides urban poor in each state ending discretion and
subjectivity, under new urban missions.
A
new beginning has also been made towards ‘bottom up’ urban planning with
mandatory consultations with citizens and other stakeholders in identification
of projects and formulation of development plans under new urban missions.
While
improvement of basic urban infrastructure is the objective of Atal Mission,
Smart City Mission adopts ‘area based development’ for enhancing quality of
living by addressing core infrastructure deficit and adoption of smart
solutions.
As
against only Rs.38,000 cr provided as Central Assistance to states and urban
local bodies under 10 years of JNNURM, the Government has committed itself to
assist states to the tune of about Rs.4 lakh cr under AMRUT, Smart City Mission
and for construction of 2 crore houses for urban poor under PMAY(Urban)
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