NEW DELHI: Four Indian cities, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, witnessed a significant drop in their rankings on the global smart cities list which was led by Singapore.
The Institute for Management Development (IMD), in collaboration with the University of Singapore to Technology and Design (SUTD), has released the 2020 Smart Cities Index, with key findings on how technology is playing a role in the COVID-19 era.
In the 2020 Smart Cities Index, Hyderabad was ranked 85 (vs. 67 in 2019), New Delhi ranked 86 (vs. 68 in 2019), Mumbai at 93 (in 2019 it was 78) and Bengaluru at 95 (79 in 2019).
“Indian cities (New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru) suffer significant declines this year. This can be attributed to the detrimental effect the pandemic has had where technological advancement was not up to date,” the report said.
He also added that “Indian cities have suffered more from the pandemic because they were not prepared.”
Based on 15 indicators that respondents perceive as priority areas for their city, the four cities highlighted air pollution as one of the key areas in which they felt their city should prioritize.
For cities like Bangalore and Mumbai, this was closely followed by road congestion, while for Delhi and Hyderabad it was basic services, according to the report.
The 2020 Smart Cities Index (SCI) was led by Singapore, followed by Helsinki and Zurich in second and third places respectively. Others on the top 10 list include Auckland (fourth), Oslo (fifth), Copenhagen (sixth), Geneva (seventh), taipei city (8th), Amsterdam (9th) and New York in 10th place.
In the context of SCI, ‘smart city’ describes an urban environment that applies technology to enhance the benefits and decrease the deficiencies of urbanization.
The second edition of the SCI ranked 109 cities around the world by capturing the perceptions of 120 randomly chosen residents in each city.
Hundreds of citizens from 109 cities were surveyed in April and May 2020 and asked questions about their city’s technological dispositions in five key areas: health and safety, mobility, activities, opportunities, and governance.
This year’s ranking reflects that cities have always different technological approaches, as the management of the pandemic has become increasingly important in local politics, according to the report.
“We cannot ignore the impact of Covid,” said the IMD professor Arturo Bris, who led the ranking work as Director of the Center for World Competitiveness at the Swiss management institute that supports it. Those with better technology handle the pandemic better. Smart cities are not the solution, but technology helps ”, he explained.
“Smart cities closest to the top of the rankings seem to deal with the unexpected challenges of the devastating pandemic with a better outcome,” commented Professor Heng Chee Chan, president of the Lee Kuan Yew Center for Innovative Cities at SUTD.
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