Revision summary
The 2015 Smart Cities Mission enumerates ten core elements, not gadgets alone. Water, power, sanitation, and mobility are the networked utilities. Affordable housing keeps the mission from becoming an elite enclave. IT and e-governance overlay pipes; they do not replace the municipality. Environment, safety, and health–education complete the official human core.
Model answer
Introduction
The Union Smart Cities Mission, launched in 2015, defined a Smart City by a published set of core infrastructure elements, not by gadgets alone. Enumeration must follow that official list — water, power, sanitation, mobility, housing, IT, governance, environment, safety, and social infrastructure — and show how area-based and pan-city layers deliver them.
Body
Networked utilities and mobility
- Adequate water supply means treated bulk, 24×7 or scheduled piped supply, metering, and reduction of non-revenue water, which AMRUT and city utilities must actually operate.
- Assured electricity includes underground cabling, solar rooftops, and smart metering so that street lighting, metro, and water pumping do not collapse with the feeder.
- Sanitation includes sewerage, sewage treatment, and scientific solid-waste management with processing, not only a bin-and-dump contract.
- Efficient urban mobility and public transport cover buses, NMT streets, ITS traffic, and, where viable, metro or BRTS; the National Urban Transport Policy remains the planning parent of this element.
- Affordable housing, especially for the poor, is listed as core infrastructure so that a Smart City is not an island of Wi-Fi beside a slum; PMAY–Urban is the usual delivery vertical.
Digital, green, and social core
- Robust IT connectivity and digitalisation — fibre, command-and-control centres, open data — are the ‘smart’ overlay on the pipes and roads, not a substitute for them.
- Good governance, especially e-governance and citizen participation, includes grievance apps, GIS property tax, and ward-level voice; the Mission’s SPV is meant to speed projects, not to eclipse the elected council.
- Sustainable environment covers green cover, energy efficiency, and pollution control, without which ‘smart’ mobility only rearranges congestion.
- Safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children, and the elderly, means lighting, CCTV with protocol, and police–municipal coordination, not surveillance as a slogan.
- Health and education complete the official core: clinics, schools, and digital health–education access so that infrastructure is human, not only municipal engineering.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD U[Water power sanitation] --> K[Smart City core] M[Mobility housing] --> K D[IT e-governance] --> K E[Environment safety health education] --> K
Conclusion
- Smart City core infrastructure is the 2015 Mission catalogue: water, power, sanitation, transport, housing, IT, e-governance, environment, safety, and health–education. Uttar Pradesh cities selected under the Mission succeed only if those ten, not a single control room, are built.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Write a note on Global Warming.
Next question in the 2018 paper (Q9). View answer →
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Is CCTV the definition of a Smart City?
No. Safety is one official element. Without water, sewer, buses, and housing, cameras do not make a city smart.
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Does the SPV replace the municipal corporation?
It should not. The Mission uses an SPV for speed and PPP. Core infrastructure still needs the elected ULB for tax, by-laws, and operations.
Same topic · past papers
UPPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2024 · Q9 · UPGS1 · 8 marks
What is smart city? Describe its main characteristics. -
2024 · Q18 · UPGS1 · 12 marks
Throw light on the concept of smart village in India and describe the main features of smart village. -
2022 · Q8 · UPGS1 · 8 marks
What is ‘Smart City Mission’? Discuss the main characteristics of cities of Eastern Uttar Pradesh selected under this scheme. -
2020 · Q8 · UPGS1 · 8 marks
What is 'Smart City Mission'? Discuss the main characteristics of cities of Eastern Uttar Pradesh selected under this scheme.
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