Leveraging its rich cultural and natural heritage, strong human capital and strong business environment as key strengths, Pune Smart City aspires to become the most liveable city in India. Dr Sanjay Kolte, CEO, shares more on the city’s progress…. Benefit of events like SU to India’s Smart City Mission It has been a great learning experience for Pune Smart City. We have been with the event since the first edition. It is an opportunity to interact with stakeholders, experts from the industry and academia and for peer learning. It plays a key role in taking ahead the Smart City Mission. Pace of progress under the Smart Cities Mission Pune Smart City is a first-round city and has been implementing programmes since 2016. Most of our projects have completed 85 per cent of the work and in the next three months, most of them will be finished. The last project, which is related to adaptive traffic, will be completed by March 2023. Impact of the pandemic on project timelines For the first two months, the ongoing projects suffered slightly due to the non-availability of workers. After the relaxation of lockdown rules, relevant arrangements were made for workers to stay onsite and transport of construction materials slowly picked up. In the end, we were able to maintain the momentum without much hindrance to the projects. Ongoing projects in the city Most projects under Pune Smart City have already been floated. Major projects like the integrated command-and-control centre coupled with the smart element projects are already operational in the city. Under the smart elements, we installed 750 IoT devices in the city that provide real-time decision-making tools. Smart city LED lighting is another pan-city project where over 147,000 street lights are replaced with LED lights; it is a PPP project operational for 12 years. Also, 150 smart e-buses have been procured and the city will be procuring 500 more. We are also working on getting water supply 24/7. Adaptive traffic management is another project that will help solve traffic woes. Dream project The adaptive traffic management system is definitely one of them. The projects implemented by Pune Smart City, especially the ones I mentioned, along with the green initiatives and the road redesigning initiatives have set us on a path to carbon neutrality. So that is a significant achievement. Biggest achievement and challenge in the Smart Cities Mission The Smart Cities Mission carries the vision of making cities smarter using technology, making them more durable, climate-friendly, inclusive and cost-effective. On these fronts, the mission has taken the cities a long way. Projects implemented by smart cities need to be emulated by nearby areas. That should become the culture for the development of cities overall. Any message to stakeholders Pune has a very good ecosystem of administration, academia, startups, institutions and industry. With the contribution of all these, Pune has a great potential to leadthe state and the country in urban development.