Investments to Improve the Quality of Life in Smart Cities

The Union Cabinet recently approved City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain 2.0 (CITIIS 2.0). CITIIS 2.0 is a program conceived by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in partnership with the French Development Agency (FDA), Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the European Union (EU), and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). The program will run for a period of four years, i.e., from 2023 till 2027. Cities are engines of growth for the economy of every nation. With increasing urbanisation, urban areas are expected to house a good percentage of India's population and contribute significantly to India's GDP by 2030. This requires comprehensive development of physical, institutional, social and economic infrastructure. All are important in improving the quality of life and attracting people and investments to the City, setting in motion a virtuous cycle of growth and development. Development of Smart Cities is a step in that direction.

What is CITIIS?

CITIIS is the main component of the 'Supporting Smart Cities Mission for a more Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Development in India,' initiative launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India in 2018. The program envisages to support competitively selected projects promoting circular economy with a focus on integrated waste management at the city level, climate-oriented reform actions at the state level, and institutional strengthening and knowledge dissemination at the national level. This assistance focuses on strengthening institutions by committing resources to systematic planning (maturation phase) before implementation, by developing results-based monitoring frameworks and by adopting technology for program monitoring. CITIIS was launched as a complementary instrument to India's Smart Cities Mission (SCM), to assist Indian cities in implementing urban infrastructure projects that are integrated, innovation-driven, and sustainable. The program promotes social inclusion, innovation, resilience and environmental sustainability in projects and has demonstrated the effectiveness of localising sustainability efforts.

CITIIS 1.0

Under CITIIS 1.0, twelve projects on four thematic areas of urban development- Public Open Spaces, Sustainable Mobility, Social and Organisational Innovation in Lowincome Settlements, and Urban e-Governance and ICT were part of this innovative program.

CITIIS 1.0 consisted of three components at city, state, and national levels:

Component 1: Assisted 12 Smart Cities in India, which were chosen by a rigorous challenge process, to develop and implement innovation-driven and sustainable urban infrastructure projects. These cities were Amritsar, Dehradun, Surat, Ujjain, Agartala, HubballiDharwad, Bhubaneswar, Kochi, Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Amravati and Chennai. Each city received financial assistance in the form of a grant and technical assistance through a three-tier model comprising an international mentor (six global mentors from India, France, Singapore, Kenya, and the USA), a domestic expert (six domestic experts from diverse areas of expertise like conservation architecture, urban planning and street design, etc.), and a pool of transversal experts (EY, TERI and AECOM).

Component 2: CITIIS partnered with the Government of Odisha to strengthen its municipal institutions. A dedicated three-member team was placed in the State Urban Development Department to manage the activities under this component.

Component 3: Promoted integrated urban management at the national level through activities undertaken by NIUA, which was the Program Management Unit (PMU) for CITIIS 1.0. The learnings gained from the 12 projects and capacity-building measures under CITIIS 1.0 were captured and disseminated to amplify the positive impacts of the program and make it a significant contributor to the urban sector in India, and beyond. This has resulted in the mainstreaming of innovative, integrated and sustainable urban development practices through a unique challenge-driven financing model based on the principles of competitive and cooperative federalism. A 'CITIIS Management Platform' was also designed as a dedicated urban project management tool that can be scaled and replicated for all urban development projects.

CITIIS 2.0

CITIIS 2.0 aims to leverage and scale up the learnings and successes of CITIIS 1.0. CITIIS 2.0 will supplement the climate actions of Government of India through its ongoing national programs (National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, AMRUT 2.0, Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 and Smart Cities Mission), as well as contributing positively to India's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and Conference of the Parties (COP26) commitments.

CITIIS 2.0 has three major components:

Component 1: Financial and technical support for developing projects focused on building climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation in up to 18 Smart Cities through selection of competitively selected projects promoting circular economy with focus on integrated waste management.

Component 2: All States and UTs will be eligible for support on demand basis. The States will be provided support to (a) setup/strengthen their existing State climate centres/climate cells/ equivalents (b) create State and city-level Climate Data Observatories (c) facilitate climate-data driven planning, develop climate action plans and (d) build capacities of municipal functionaries. To achieve these objectives, the PMU at NIUA will coordinate provision of technical assistance and strategic support to State Governments.

Component 3: Interventions at all three levels; Centre, State and City to further climate governance in urban India through institutional strengthening, knowledge dissemination, partnerships, building capacity, research and development to support scale up across all States and Cities. The funding for CITIIS 2.0 would include a loan of Rs.1,760 crore (EUR 200 million) from AFD and KfW (EUR 100 million each) and a technical assistance grant of Rs.106 cr. (EUR 12 million) from the EU.

Smart Cities Mission

Smart Cities Mission is an urban renewal and retrofitting programme launched by the Government of India to develop smart cities and make them citizen friendly and sustainable. In the approach to the Smart Cities Mission, the objective is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of 'Smart' Solutions. The focus is on sustainable and inclusive development and the idea is to look at compact areas, create a replicable model which will act like a lighthouse to other aspiring cities. It is meant to set examples that can be replicated both within and outside the Smart City, catalysing the creation of similar Smart Cities in various regions and parts of the country.

Compiled by: Annesha Banerjee & Anuja Bhardwajan Source: PIB/smartcities.gov. in/citiis. niua.in/IBEF