Even as Chhattisgarh’s Urban Adminstration and Development Department and the municipal corporations of Raipur and Bilaspur buckle up to start work on ‘Smart City’ mission, senior officials are now preparing for the Stage-II of City Challenge competition to receive further funding for the projects.
Significantly, a two-day ‘Ideas Camp’ on various aspects of smart city development is being organised in New Delhi from Tuesday (October 6) to enable effective participation of the 98 cities included in the Smart City Mission in the second stage of City Challenge competition, officials stated.
This camp is being organised by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is the knowledge partner of the Ministry of Urban Development for Smart City Mission.
Mayors and Municipal Commissioners of all the 98 cities included in the Smart City Mission besides Principal Secretaries of Urban Development from States or UTs will also participate in the Ideas Camp.
Most of the Mission Cities have so far selected consultants for preparation of city-wise Smart City Plans.
The Ideas Camp is being held at a time when the cities included in the Smart City Mission are set to begin preparation of city wise Smart City Plans which will be evaluated in the second stage of City Challenge competition based on a broad set of criteria for identifying the top ranking first 20 cities for financing during the current financial year. Others will be required to address the deficiencies identified before participating in the subsequent 2nd and 3rd rounds of competition wherein 40 cities will be selected for financing each year.
Anthony Williams, former Mayor of Washington, Stephen Yarwood, former lord Mayor of Adelaide, Australia, Brenton Caffin, Director of Innovation Skills, Nesta, Phillip Rode, Executive Director, lSE Cities, Adam Freed, Principal, Bloomberg Associates, Raghu Kesavan of World Bank, Sanjeev Sanyal, Global Strtegist, Deutsche Bank, Deepti Jain of IIT, Delhi, Rose Gill Hearn, former Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Investigation besides other experts will participate in the discussions.
All the 100 city-level plans will be evaluated based on a set of elaborate criteria by the Union Urban Development Ministry, officials stated.
Each of these cities have been given `2 crore each for preparation of city level Smart City plans in the next three months by the Ministry.
The 20 cities have been nominated by the respective State Governments after the first round of competition, further to evaluation of all urban local bodies in each State as per a set of criteria including the existing service levels, institutional and financial capacities and past track record in implementation of JNNURM projects and reforms undertaken.