The beachfront area in Visakhapatnam will become the new USP for tourism promotion after developing the city as a smart city.
GVMC Commissioner Pravin Kumar, while stating that the Smart City Mission would provide the ecosystem for investments, said on Saturday the beachfronts had become USP to promote tourism in San Francisco and the famous beachfront locations of France.
Mr. Pravin Kumar was addressing a seminar on usage of steel in developing smart cities in India organised at Green City by Institute of Steel Development & Growth and Steel Scenario magazine with the support of RINL and Steel Exchange India Limited.
MP K. Haribabu, Visakhapatnam Port Trust Chairman M.T. Krishna Babu, RINL Director (Commercial) Prabir Raychaudhury, Muralikrishna from Tata Steel and others mentioned how the construction of 100 smart cities would trigger a big boom for steel industry.
Mr. Pravin Kumar said they would finalise project management consultant for the special purpose vehicle on smart cities. The PMC would not only design and finalise the roadmap for smart city project but also monitor the implementation.
Retrofit model
Stating that the smart city project would be implemented over 500 acres on retrofit model (existing area improvement), he said it would be replicated in other areas in the next phase.
Mr. Pravin Kumar said the smart city would have high resilience with 24x7-public transport, robust water and power supply and other requirements. He said the integrated approach would attract more tourists as well as propel industrial growth.
He said the city would also get the Metro Rail project for which detailed project report had been completed. Besides last mile connectivity, they would encourage affordable housing, storm water drainage, proper use of open spaces by developing parks and cycling-to-work culture.
The Commissioner said there would be multiple IT layers and an integrated e-governance system in place for fixing accountability and ensuring transparency.
