Smart Fridays

In the citizen consultation meet of New Town yesterday, I invited IT professionals of New Town, many of whom were already present in the meeting, to meet me and my team on Fridays between 4-6pm at NKDA Conference Hall to give their feedback, suggestions and ideas. Like Bloomberg Philanthropies, we will also observe Fridays as Smart Fridays. We will brainstorm and have free discussions with New Town citizens as well as professional institutions in New Town such as TCS, those in DLF/Unitech/Eco Space IT enclaves to fine tune the Master Smart Cit Plan for New Town.

Yesterday we distributed a brochure outlining the framework of Smart Cities and requested for a feedback in the form (or on-line at http://smartcity.nkdamar.org/Feedback.html ). By next Friday, the first Innovation Friday on Smart New Town.

I was listening carefully to citizen suggestions and I got a sense of what New Town residents wanted in Smart New Town. Some of the first impressions I got were:

1. Should be pedestrian friendly: pavements, traffic signals, car parking plazas, underpasses with escalators and no stray dogs.
2. Should have clean air: more green plantation, control on auto emission, focus on construction material management, street food waste and fume management.
3. Inclusive information sharing: Many said that while IT-enabled information dissemination through social media, web, mobile apps were okay, there were many especially among the seniors who feel visual outdoor displays in public places were necessary. I talked about FM Radio and old fashioned wall magazines near bus stands.

* * *
Here is a clipping:

Khabar 365 dt 19 Sep 2015