Govt planning two 'smart' cities in each state

NEW DELHI: Government is planning to develop two "smart" cities with a host of modern features like intelligent transport and carbon neutral status in each of the states in the second phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal mission.

"We have an urban renewal mission which means that the central government funds the cities and one of our programmes is that we propose to have two smart cities in every state," Urban Development minister Kamal Nath told reporters here today.

The minister said medium sized cities with half a million to one million population will be developed as smart cities and expertise of Austrian Institute of Technology had been sought for the purpose.

Nath was speaking after meeting a delegation led by Austrian minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology Doris Bures here.

"Now how do we define these smart cities, what will it cover....right from broadband, intelligent transport to carbon neutral (features), these are so many components...that is what we propose to collaborate with the Austrian Institute of Technology," he said.

"We want to seek assistance from the Institute on what kind of model smart cities we should look at," he added.

Nath also said that medium sized cities like Ujjain or Jabalpur would be considered for the proposal to create smart cities.

"We cannot take on very large cities for smart cities at this stage, we must recognise that. We have to take our medium sized ones, so we want to look at cities with half a million population to one million population instead of trying to take on cities with ten million population," he said.

"We have discussed the possibility of collaboration between the Austrian Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Urban Affairs which comes under the ministry of Urban Development," Nath said.