Urban Whims

India’s Smart Cities Mission will see population centres around the nation transformed into high-tech hubs – theoretically anyway. But who will benefit most from this drive towards a smarter future?

- Duncan Forgan

Crowded, dirty and chaotic, cities in India have traditionally suffered a bad press. Nobody would dispute that major conurbations such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are charismatic treasure troves of history and culture. But anyone who has choked on traffic fumes while trying to negotiate crumbling pavements teeming with people, will attest to their dysfunctional nature.

Yet while India’s urban centres can be hard to love, they are key to the future economic health of the world’s second most populous nation.

Urbanisation continues to occur at a breakneck pace. As people flood in from the countryside in search of better opportunities, India’s urban population cities is expected to grow by 250 million to 590 million people by 2030.

Such formidable numbers call for drastic measures. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is going further than ever before to set the urban development agenda through its ambitious Smart Cities Mission.

“The Government aims to develop cities into engines of growth, while improving the quality of life of its citizens,” comments Anshuman Magazine, chairman of India and South East Asia at CBRE. “It is therefore imperative to develop and promote these urban centres to support and sustain urbanisation in the long run.”

The initiative aims to change the face of 98 of India’s fast-growing urban centres – turning the cities into tech-driven, sustainable entities where land is maximised through forward-thinking projects — and the central government has allocated an estimated USD7.5 billion to the Mission.