: Kochi city will focus on five thematic areas including clean city, green and resilient city in its campaign to become a Smart City.
The other focus areas would be to develop Kochi as a tourist gateway and provide efficient urban services and offer smart governance to its citizens. The focus areas were identified after renewing the responses of various stakeholders of the city.
The city has also laid out its “key goals and the strategies to achieve’ them, according to the authorities. A series of consultations was carried out for identifying the priority areas. Polls were also conducted to identify the priority areas for intervention in the city as part of the Special Ward Sabhas. The citizens shared the 24 smart city features as defined by the Ministry and asked to pick their choices.
ICRA, a Chennai-based agency, empanelled by the Ministry of Urban Development, has been assigned the task of preparing the detailed project report. The city was one of the 98 cities selected in the first round.
Around 20 cities will be offered assistance by the Ministry during the first year of the project.
The local body aims to get the city included in the “top 20 cities for the first round of funding, for the financial year 2015-16. The remaining 80 shortlisted cities will further improve their proposal for next round of challenge in the subsequent year,” according to the consultants.
The project consultants will make a presentation before the newly elected council of the Kochi Corporation on Wednesday. According to the consultants, the city dwellers have selected urban transportation and mobility, sewerage/ septage management, rejuvenation/ revitalisation of water bodies especially canals, solid waste management, intelligent government services and open spaces, as the other priority areas.
The vision statement of the project hopes to transform Kochi into “a sustainable, inclusive and economically vibrant city of opportunities with efficient urban services, traditional hospitality and smart governance.”
The detailed project report of the city should be submitted to the Ministry before December 15.
