As part of the nationwide “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (AKAM)” celebrations, the Smart Cities Mission has launched a “Smart cities and Academia Towards Action & Research (SAAR)” programme.

It is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA), National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and leading Indian academic institutions of the country.

Under the programme, 15 premier architecture and planning institutes of the country will be working with Smart Cities to document landmark projects undertaken by the Smart Cities Mission. The documents will capture the learnings from best practices, provide opportunities for engagement on urban development projects to students, and enable real-time information flow between urban practitioners and academia.

The Smart Cities Mission’s urban projects are lighthouse projects to other aspiring cities. Since the start of the mission in 2015, the 100 Smart Cities have been developing a total of 5,151 projects with an investment of Rs. 2,05,018 crore.

The first activity envisaged under SAAR is to prepare a compendium of 75 landmark urban projects in India under the Smart City Mission. These 75 urban projects are innovative, multi-sectoral, and have been implemented across geographies. The program marks the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, with the idea to showcase the country’s best practices and on-ground achievements.

The compendium will act as a first point of reference for future research in the field, help disseminate learnings from projects under the Mission, act as a repository for Urban Projects, and contribute to dissemination of best practices and peer-to-peer learning. The 75 projects covered in the compendium are distributed across 47 Smart Cities. The partner institutes documenting the projects include inter alia Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Center for Environment Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal.

The workflow of the compendium being prepared by SAAR will include field Investigation, data analysis and documentation, national research methodology workshop for the participating students, peer review of first draft, final submission by research students to their respective institutions, institutional submission of research to NIUA, and leading to the launch of compendium of 75 urban projects by June 2022.

The SAAR project includes 75 urban projects distributed across 47 Smart cities. The cities include: Agra, Ajmer, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Dharamshala, Faridabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur, Saharanpur, Shimla, Srinagar, Belgavi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Erode, Kakinada, Kochi, Manguluru, Shivamogga, Thanjavur, Thiruchirapalli, Thiruvananthapuram, Tumakuru, Ahmedabad, Dahod, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Surat, Thane, Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, New Town Kolkata, Ranchi, Visakhapatnam, Bhopal, Gwalior, Indore, Raipur, Sagar, Ujjain, Jabalpur, Agartala, Gangtok, and Namchi.

The premier institutes of the country, partner in in this event include: Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee; Malaviya National Institute of Technology; Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi; R V College of Architecture, Bangalore; Anna University; College of Engineering, Trivandrum; Department of Architecture & Planning, Manipal University; Center for Environment Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad; College of Engineering, Pune; Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai; Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; Indian Institute of Science and Environment Technology, Shibpur; School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada; School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal; and Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology.