Thursday, September 24, 2015

Future Gazing

A six-member UK Team from Future Cities Catapult (FCC) will hold a 2-day workshop at New Town Kolkata to handhold it for making its Smart City Plan. An MoU was signed and exchanged between HIDCO and FCC at London when Hon'ble Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led a Govt of West Bengal delegation to London in late July 2015. FCC is a UK Government-backed organisation, helping cities become better places to live. Its Cities Lab, which I and our delegation had visited too, provides data analysis, modelling and visualisation capabilities to understand and elucidate city problems.

A six member team of experts from FCC will arrive in Kolkata on 28th September and will have a tour of New Town and discuss preliminary issues with me and NKDA / HIDCO officers in the afternoon. The 2-day workshop will begin on 29th September (Tuesday) at 10 am at Utsari Glass Hall at Eco Park. The inauguration will be done by Shri Sanjay Mitra, Chief Seecretary. The team members from FCC would be:

Amy Hochadel, Future Cities Catapult, Global Cities Lead
Rudi Ball, Future Cities Catapult, Innovation Lab Lead
Anja Maerz, Future Cities Catapult, Insights Team Lead
Emma Shaw, Future Cities Catapult, Senior Analyst
Anubhav Ghosh, Burrohappold Engineering, FCC India Partner
Jim Coleman, Burrohappold Engineering, FCC India Partner

The boot camp or the 2-day workshop will be called "City Academy" and its primary purpose would be to make New Town understand what is meant by Future Cities, how it can benchmark itself against global competition and perform future-gazing to develop packages based on city specific strategy.

The delegation will continue to work in co-ordination with NKDA and HIDCO using email, web, Skype etc and this phase is expected to continue at least till December 2015.

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Clippings:
Anandabazr dt 24 Sep 2015
Khabar 365 dt 24 Sep 2015
Telegraph dt 24 Sep 2015
Bartaman dt 24 Sep 2015

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4 comments:

  1. SDSeptember 24, 2015 at 11:20 AM

    GM Sir,
    although this comment is not related to the topic, still as we don't have any online portal for suggestion/comment on newtown; the service lane for DLF Phase 2 (Ericsson Building) has become full of potholes, some of which are 1 feet deep. it is very difficult to walk or drive through. Can we have some patch atleast done over the weekend?
    Rgds

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 24, 2015 at 2:03 PM

    Hello Sir,

    Sorry for being Off Topic here.

    Kindly take note of precarious and dangerous road condition of Jatragachchi - Gauranganagar.

    Regards

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 25, 2015 at 10:09 AM

    Exactly, the road is badly damaged. Plus the encroachment and zero traffic management makes it worse. It would be of great help if you could address these concerns.

    ReplyDelete
  4. DipankarSeptember 25, 2015 at 10:51 AM

    Bridge & road at Jatragachchi - Gauranganagar will make the place safe and approachable to everyone including law and order mgmt govt. groups. I hope, Incomplete flyover near WBHIDCO also have near completion plan else being in MAR connecting Airport feeling we can start in WB but finishing is still an issue. Just an honest opinion. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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