New Town Kolkata was today announced as one of 13 cities selected for the India Smart Cities Challenge. The city was ranked number six out of the cities selected. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), which supported New Town Kolkata in their application, congratulates all of those involved in this major achievement for the city’s efforts to tackle climate change.
The India Smart Cities Challenge is a competition designed to inspire and support cities in India to develop smart proposals to improve residents' lives. The best proposals selected in each year of the Challenge receive funding from the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India and matching funds from their respective State Governments.
New Town Kolkata will use the funding to deliver a series of projects to improve the liveability and improve its economic potential and in the process reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. These include:
- An Integrated Solid Waste Management System with a monitoring system to measure methane emissions.
- A ‘Single Window system’, known as One-NKDA, which will allow citizens to go to a single location for all of their tasks associated with city.
- Dedicated bicycle lanes and pedestrian priority lanes to make the city more walkable and accessible. This will make the city more liveable and in-turn increasing its economic potential by attracting the best talent to New Town Kolkata.
- Improving last mile connectivity and enhancing inter-modal integration as a strategic focus to incentivize walking and public transport.
“On behalf of the whole C40 network, I send my congratulations to the city of New Town Kolkata and all of it’s citizens for their success in the Smart Cities Challenge,” said Mayor of Rio de Janeiro and Chair of C40, Eduardo Paes. “Indian cities have an incredibly important role to play in the global effort to tackle climate change. The successful prosperous and sustainable cities of the future will be those that can be smart in their development and cities across the C40 network are learning from each other how to do it.”
As a member of C40, New Town Kolkata was able to draw on the global best practices from other C40 member cities. C40’s team of experts supported the city to contextualize successful examples from other cities into workable and implementable projects for the Indian context.
“The smartening of the Smart City Plan of New Town Kolkata was greatly facilitated by C40 Cities”, said Mr. Debashis Sen, Chairman, New Town Kolkata Development Authority and Additional Chief Secretary-Urban Development, Government of West Bengal. “They participated in all discussions and helped us find the true spirit of the city. Examples from other parts of India and the world, fresh insights and new perspectives made us think and rework the plan. I especially acknowledge the contribution of Mr. Sanjay Sridhar, Regional Director, C40 Cities South and West Asia and his team and would like to say we value his inputs and would like continued involvement of C40 cities in the implementation phase too.”
“I am happy to learn that NKDA has been selected in the Smart City Competition from West Bengal,” said Janab Firhad Hakim, Minister of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs, Chairman Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA),Government of West Bengal. “The Government of West Bengal has taken initiative for encouraging Smart urban development and I hope this will help in strengthening our endeavor. We will give our full effort for making NKDA an example for the smart cities in the country and in future we will develop more smart cities within Kolkata Metropolitan Area in line with C40 Cities which will help Bengal stride ahead.”