Mangaluru: Mangaluru is one among the 98 cities shortlisted in the first stage of selection in the smart city challenge.
In order to ensure that Mangaluru makes it to the list of first 20 cities for the implementation of Smart City project, the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) in association with Nispana Innovative Platforms will be organising a two-day conference on ‘Sustainable Smart Cities of India’ at TMA Pai International Convention Centre on November 16 and 17.
Addressing media persons at a press meet, Nispana Innovative Platforms MD Narendra Kumar said that the conference will bring in global expertise to ensure that the city is selected at the second stage of the Smart City challenge. Some of the top challenges of the smart city will include devising a foolproof plan to develop smart cities, meaningful public-private partnership, increasing the renewable energy, water supply, effective waste management, traffic management, meeting power demand, urban mobility, ICT connectivity and e-governance.
The conference will see the participation of the city’s governing council, patrons, consultants, industrialists, developers, citizens, who will be contributing towards making Mangaluru a smart city while retaining its rich heritage and culture.
MCC Commissioner Dr H N Gopalakrishna said that the conference will help create a roadmap for converting the smart cities vision into a reality and the theme for the conference is ‘Transforming Mangaluru towards a Sustainable and Smart future.’
Consultant Dharmaraj said that citizens of Mangaluru have shared around 40,000 responses in the second round of citizen engagement of the smart city challenge and priorities on the projects based on their immediate requirements. The new guidelines for Smart City recommend taking up areas, based on the development and to plan for the development of core infrastructural facilities which will be taken up, along with two to three Pan City initiatives.
“The State and Union governments are funding the smart city project, granting Rs 500 crore each, for the next five years,” he added.
Aravind Shekar, conference producer from Nispana Innovative Platforms Pvt Ltd, said that all the councillors and officials of MCC, employees from different government departments, representatives from real estate sector, engineers and students will attend the two-day conference.
Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality Director Media and Communication Gideon Schmerling was present at the press meet
