Smart Cities mission to thrive on high volume real estate development: RICS

India’s Smart Cities Mission will provide immense opportunities for high volume real estate development considering the highest chunk of the proposed capital investment in smart cities-about 89 per cent has been allocated for built environment (urban development & housing, buildings, waterfront development etc.) transportation, water, wastewater management and energy, according to a white paper released today by RICS.

RICS in partnership with RICS School of Built Environment (SBE), Amity University on Tuesday released a white paper titled, “Urban Makeover: Evolution or Revolution” at the RICS Cities Conference 2016. The white paper looks at the ground realities of smart cities and its execution challenges.

Sachin Sandhir, Global Managing Director – Emerging Business, RICS said, “The white paper attempts to look at the opportunities provided by the Smart Cities Mission for cities to transform themselves and at the same time, highlights challenges that need due attention and discussion. We are working with central and state government bodies on various aspects and providing technical advice and international best practices; helping structure projects that will go into making smart cities and helping them tap into sources of finance from land and real estate assets on a sustained basis.”

Devina Ghildial, Managing Director, South Asia, RICS said, “RICS white paper among other things examines how the Indian model of smart cities is unique because it promotes area based development instead of pan city development. Almost 74 per cent of the investment is targeted towards area based development.” Devina further added that smart technologies such as Big Data, Building Information Modelling (BIM), Cloud and mobile computing etc. will hold the key to the future of smart cities.

The white paper talks about how a relatively smaller portion of the proposed capital investment amounting to about 11 per cent of Rs. 48,000 crore in the 20 smart cities that were selected in the first round of the smart city challenge will be spent on technology infrastructure and public services.

Technology infrastructure would include projects relating to Information Technology in the public domain such as communications and operations, connectivity and public interface apart from public services such as health, education, governance and socio-cultural initiatives, which forms the core of smart city infrastructure.