Dholera SIR is India’s First Sustainable Greenfield Industrial Smart City located 100 km South West of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India.
It is one of the largest cities getting developed along with (DMIC) Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor alignment.
Let’s talk about Greenfield and Brownfield Smart Cities concept.
Greenfield Smart Cities
Greenfield cities are developed on barren land from very scratch. Such areas are identified usually a little far from city area where scope of development looks feasible and those areas are identified after thoroughly doing studies about them. Those areas do not witness any sort of development prior. In Greenfield smart cities development just starts from zero, absolutely zero.
In India, Greenfield Smart Cities program comes under Ministry of Commerce (through Department of Industrial Policy and Promotions – DIPP)
Brownfield Smart Cities
These cities already exisits and we try to convert them into a better developed city or a smart city by installing certain technologies like traffic management, city wide IoT Applications, wi-fi, widening of roads, expressways etc. Like we have Surat or Ahmedabad in Gujarat or Faridabad or Gurgoan in Delhi NCR.
In June 2015, our Honorable PM Sh. Narender Modi Ji launched 100 Smart Cities Mission which is under Ministry of Urban Development (MoUd).
So, Greenfield Smart Cities and Brownfield Smart Cities are totally different concepts altogether. It has nothing to do with each other, ministries are different, work approach if different and everything is different.
Objective of Brownfield Smart Cities mission is to give a new direction to the existing cities as to how these cities can become Smart Cities so that better infrastructure like roads, expressways or better and managed transportation, education system, public facilities etc. will be provided. These cities are to be worked upon to make them self-sustainable smart cities.
Now, let’s discuss Dholera SIR. Dholera qualifies as a Greenfield Smart City since it is being developed entirely from barren land with no prior development. Similarly, numerous other Greenfield Smart Cities worldwide are either already developed or currently in the process of being created from scratch on barren land.
Some of the examples of such cities are:
Masdar City – In the UAE, Masdar City is a master-planned live-work community with an emphasis on sustainability.
Fujisawa: Spanning over 69.57 Sq kms is a sustainable smart town near Tokyo is one of the first Greenfield Smart Cities. Among its features are virtual fences to protect the residents.
Dholera SIR – Spanning over 920 sq kms Dholera SIR is India’s first Greenfield Industrial Smart City and one of the Biggest Cities of DMIC (Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor).
Dholera will completely transform into a self-sustainable smart city, dedicating only 422 sq kms for developable areas and reserving the rest for parks, water bodies, green spaces, solar parks, etc. In fact, they will preserve almost half of the designated area to maintain a balance in nature.
These Future Cities are definitely going to chane the trend of developing new cities across the globe.
