There is a need to create a benchmark for grading smart cities, according to Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Chief Executive Officer & MD.

He was delivering the keynote address in a session on building greenfield smart cities at “Sm@rt Urbanation: Convention & Expo 2018’’ held here on Friday.

The Smart Cities Council India, part of the Global Consortium of Smart Cities, had organised the two-day conference to analyse the learnings and impact assessment.

Planning and governance

Smart cities should have better quality of life, a provision for live-work-play, ease of doing business, supporting policies and sustainable life, he observed.

Stating that issues in governance and planning should be addressed, Sharma said new smart cities need to be future-proof and strive to make citizens happy.

According to Jagadish Salgaonkar, Senior Vice-President/Programme Director, AECOM Dholera Industrial City, building greenfiled smart cities will pose few challenges such as deciding the location of the city, effective phasing and right footprint to start.

“The toughest part is marketing. The question is how to attract new businesses. I feel engineering is easier than marketing,’’ he said.

Creation of multiple opportunities will be of help in making new smart cities successful, said Siddharth Bafna, Head (Industrial Clusters) of Mahindra Life Space Developers Ltd.

In addition to looking for anchor-customers, the potential in local business communities should also be tapped, he added.

Eco-friendly materials

Its not only about infrastructure always when it comes to building of new cities but also about using eco-friendly and sustainable building materials was the view point of Anand Muthukrishnan, Principal Counsellor, Indian Green Building Council.

Promotion of sustainable building materials can also result in reduction in bad practices such as illegal sand mining, among others.

In view of Ashish Mathur, Managing Director, JUSCO, for making a smart city successful, there is a need to integrate community with the project.

The last day of the conference had also witnessed few other panel discussions in topics such as smart energy and waste and water management.

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