Five new smart cities to be developed under DMIC project

As a part of the plan to develop 100 smart cities, the government has identified five places in as many states on the alignment of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) to be developed as smart cities. The cities that have been identified are Dholera in Gujarat, Shendra-Bidkin in Maharashtra, Greater Noida in UP, Ujjain (MP) and Gurgaon in Haryana.

A total of 24 manufacturing cities are envisaged under the DMIC project. The initial phase of the new cities will be completed by 2019.

A senior commerce ministry official said these five places have been identified in the course of ongoing industrial as well as other business activities in these areas. “All these places are on the DMIC corridor. The idea is to have global regional cities,” said the official. While Gurgaon has already established as a cyber city of North India, a special investment region is coming up at Dholera in Gujarat – a port city 40 km away from Ahmedabad.
The investment in the urban development project at Dholera is pegged at Rs 72,000 crore. A slew of international corporations have evinced interest in the project. Similarly, industrial cities will be developed in the Shendra-Bidkin area of the Aurangabad district in Maharashtra.

The smart cities will have special features. The government has identified these cities as global regional cities with key sustainable development concepts. As per the plans, the focus will be on transport, IT-enabled governance, conservation of natural resources and use of renewable energy.

The blue print for the smart cities on the DMIC corridor says, “The focus will be on reduction of the commuting needs. These cities will have multiple Central Business Districts (CBDs) and industrial zones. The land use will be integrated and mixed-use will be encouraged. Provision will have to be made for affordable houses for the workers near the industrial zones.”

Apart from these, the government is also looking at setting up high capacity multi-nodal mass transit corridors, with due encouragement to cycling and pedestrian ways. Also, recycling and re use of water and solid waste will be provided, and governance and administration will be IT-based on real time basis.

DMIC will serve as a 1,483 km manufacturing hub on the alignment of the Dedicated freight corridor between Delhi and Mumbai. The freight corridor will serve as a logistics backbone to the goods produced on the industrial corridor. The government has also conceptualised four other corridors on which the work is likely to begin at a later stage. These corridors are Bengaluru-Mumbai Economic Corridor, Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Development Corridor, Chennai-Bengaluru, East-Cost Economic corridor and Chennai-Vizag corridor.