Health and Wellness: It is very important to give due emphasis to better hygienic practices to prevent and control food-borne and other diseases. Many people across social strata consume street food eateries but especially the working class uses these eateries for their regular day-meals and refreshments, as these eateries can meet their food requirements at affordable prices. The Kakinada Smart City Corporation Limited has undertaken an initiative to improve street food-vending facility in the city.
Under the initiative, modern food-vending carts were procured for street eateries. These carts were provided to food vendors from economically weaker section of the society by the arrangement of bank loans. With a cost outlay of around INR 5.6 crore, 100 modern food-vending carts have now replaced the dilapidated food vending facilities, facilitating safer/more hygienic food for consumers. This initiative would certainly to improve public health by facilitating safer street food for many citizens.
The World Health Organization in its study (2017) on Urban green space interventions and health: A review of impacts and effectiveness, has pointed out that interventions on green space in urban settings can help address public health issues related to obesity, cardiovascular effects, mental health and well-being.
After the bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the former would establish Amravati as the new capital and right from the start aimed to establish it as one of the happiest cities of the world encompassing the highest standards of livability, infrastructure with a thriving economic environment. The concept of ‘happy cities’ has been undertaken with the underlying understanding the in the age of unprecedented urbanization, it is imperative to be bold and disruptive in our thinking for cities. This includes the need to identify innovative solutions that can help meet the rising aspirations of our people and engender socio-economic transformation while being cognizant of the constraints. A focus on the well-being and happiness of citizens is a must and without this, urbanization would produce environments that are devoid of character and a sense of community.
The Happy City concept of Amravati is based on the following pillars: a well-integrated governance system; a built environment that is climatically and culturally appropriate nurturing an inclusive, sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle; a natural environment that is clean and green; economy and livelihoods that support decent jobs; culture and community that embraces diversity, fosters a sense of belonging and compassion; and physical and mental wellbeing that is promoted through the daily choices of residents and policies of government that is improved through healthy eating, physical activity, good work-life balance and a clean, safe and secure environment and which encourages a positive outlook, a sense of contentment and joy.
In Northeast Brazil, the Council Lead Partner Cisco is piloting in a small state in Northeast Brazil that has undertaken collaboration and cloud technologies to bring virtual pediatrics to underserved communities and prepare Brazil’s Children to a healthier future.
Smart Dubai has developed the Happiness Meter as a scientific and systematic approach to measure residents’ happiness; it captures customer happiness levels at various smart city dimensions which integrates seamlessly into the experience flow of residents and visitors while creating meaningful data towards the goal of “making Dubai the happiest city on earth” by 2021. So far, more than 20 million users voted through the Happiness Meters. Analyzing the data enables city managers “to make objective comparisons, and therefore prioritize amongst proposed projects within the city. In this way, they would have a data-driven tool to maximize happiness and wellbeing in the city, in the context of smart city key performance indicators”.
Another model of data-driven solutions is embodied in San Francisco’s open data initiative. It supports smart-city projects, such as the Environmental Justice program aiming to reduce gas emission, improve public transport services, and create safe and affordable housing in underserved neighbourhoods. Data-driven technologies are ever so important to gather, analyze and track residents’ expectations and happiness, which in turn is becoming a more accurate measurement of a successful smart city.
Education: Smart education is at the core of the Smart Cities Mission. The Greater Vishakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) schools in Vishakhapatnam have created a success story in the field of smart education. Its campuses have been modernized and transformed into smart campuses having modern education infrastructure that serves all strata of the society by focusing on: equipping schools with technology-based learning resources; schools having video conferencing where a teacher in one location is able to teach/ interact with students from other schools in different locations; equipping the
schools with interactive learning sessions with other schools; providing universal accessible design in all schools; creating an identity/ brand building for GVMC schools; creating clean and green education campuses and providing active outdoor spaces for sports and extra-curricular activities.
Barcelona in Spain is not only frequently in the news for being a leading smart city but now the city is launching the Smart City Business Institute (SCBI). The institute works with the Municipal Institute of IT to introduce the concept of smart cities through “smart education” from elementary school to high schools.
In Finland, the city of Tampere has begun with an interesting practice that utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the local companies by engaging the Tampere University of Technology (TUT) professors and students and bring the companies and academia together. In the pilot phase, the helpdesk services, workshops and experimental piloting is being conducted.
In Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Smart Citizens Lab has been created as a capacity building project of Amsterdam Smart City in the Netherlands. This Lab has been central to the facilitation of collective action by encouraging the citizen-driven solutions on themes ranging from air quality to noise pollution to condition of bathing water.
Sanitation: In its mission to create a city that is economically vibrant, inclusive, livable and sustainable, the Kakinada Smart City Corporation in Andhra Pradesh provides proper sanitation facilities to the poor citizens of the city dwellers. Under this agenda, a survey was conducted to assess the number of houses/ families in slum areas under Area Based Development (ABD), which did not have individual toilets, and accordingly individual toilets were constructed.
Under this initiative, over 500 individual toilets have been constructed in slum areas under ABD. Each toilet has associated septic tanks, which will collect the waste for 20 years in normal circumstances.
It is interesting to note that the ABD area of Kakinada is now Open Defecation Free (ODF). There is a reduction in water borne diseases in the area; and dignity of dwellers, especially women is preserved, as they do not need to go out of their premises to defecate. The project has contributed to Kakinada being judged as the cleanest city in population category of 2 to 10 lakh categories in South India for the ‘Swachh Sarvekshan Awards 2017’.