Pune city has made it to the 50 Champion Cities representing the boldest urban innovations of the past year. It will advance to the final stage of the 2021 Global Mayors Challenge, a worldwide competition that encourages and spreads cities’ most promising ideas. The top 15 will win one million dollars each in aid to implement the breakthrough ideas and to spread the ideas to other cities around the world.
The announcement was made by Bloomberg Philanthropies on Tuesday for the competition that takes place once in three years. “Among Indian cities, Pune has some of the highest rates of vehicle ownership, and vehicles contribute nearly 25 per cent of particulate pollution in the city. To increase early adoption of electric vehicles (EV), Pune proposes to prepare a city EV-readiness plan and establishes an EV fund that incentivises use. The idea stands out because Pune is seen as a city at the vanguard of India’s national smart cities push and a hub of innovation. Success in Pune could allow solutions to scale across India and achieve broad impact,” it said.
This year’s challenge focuses on elevating the most important innovations generated in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 631 cities from 99 countries submitted their promising ideas for the competition. The selected 50 cities are from 29 countries of six continents. Apart from Pune, another Indian city Rourkela has made it to the top 50 cities in the competition. The finalists were elevated based on four criteria — vision, potential for impact, feasibility and transferability.
“The PMC had submitted its plan on building the foundation for an all-electric-vehicle future. We started working on it in January this year and submitted the application by March-end. It is a prestigious competition and puts the city in the race of top cities across the globe,” said the civic officer.
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Now that the PMC has been selected in the top 50 cities, he said the body would prepare a detailed plan on the implementation of its innovative idea for making it successful. “The detailed plan would help the city to compete with other cities for bagging the top 15 positions in the competition. It will not only bring a name for the city but also enable financial support for the implementation of the plan,” officer said.
