What is a smart city?

: The Union Ministry of Urban Development has brought out a concept paper highlighting different aspects of what constitutes a smart city.

It says that a smart city for its sustainability needs to offer economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income. It needs to identify its comparative or unique advantage and core competence in specific areas of economic activities and promote such activities aggressively, by developing the required institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure and attracting investors and professionals to take up such activities.

Apart from employment, it is also important for a smart city to offer good living options to every resident. This would mean that it will have to provide a very high quality of life, good quality but affordable housing, cost-efficient physical, social and institutional infrastructure such as adequate water supply, sanitation, round-the-clock electric supply, clean air, quality education, cost-efficient health care, dependable security, entertainment, sports, robust and high speed interconnectivity, fast and efficient urban mobility.

In this context, a smart city should be able to attract investments, experts and professionals. Quality infrastructure, simple and transparent online business and public services processes that make it easy to practice one’s profession or to establish an enterprise without any bureaucratic hassles are essential features of a citizen-centric and investor-friendly smart city.