HYDERABAD: At a time when the Andhra Pradesh government is embarking upon a severe austerity drive to tide over financial crisis, several of its top officials are on a world tour to ‘study’ prominent cities and their best practices.
In July, the AP cabinet had cleared a foreign tour by CRDA officials to undertake a survey of newly-built cities and implement some of those ideas back home in Amaravati. While one CRDA team has already left for China, several other teams – totaling about 10 officials led by commissioner N Srikanth – will begin their tour on Wednesday. Interestingly, P Naryana, the municipal & urban development minister and a close confidante of CM N Chandrababu Naidu, will also join the teams soon, sources said.
The government has finalised a list of 10 cities across the globe – eight Asian, one South American and one European – for the tour that will wind up on November 7. “Yes, it’s a very important exercise and our officials will visit different cities to find the best possible examples of excellence,” Ajay Jain, principle secretary of CRDA, told TOI.
While Ashghbat (capital of Turkmenistan) and Astana (capital of Kazakhstan) is high on the agenda, the cities of Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Vienna (Austria), Brasilia (Brazil), Songdo (South Korea), Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi ( China) and Masdar (UAE) are the other cities in the list. While Vienna is the seventh-largest city in Europe and known for its heritage buildings, Brasilia (the capital of Brazil) has many sectors and blocks planned from scratch.
The CRDA is upbeat about visiting Songdu in South Korea. “It is a new smart city built recently on 600 hectares of reclaimed land along a water front southwest of Seoul. Hangzhou is another city in Zhejiang province in eastern China. It is also a waterfront city, known to be fast-growing,” said one official.
While Suzhou, a city located about 100 km from Shanghai, is a major economic centre and focal point of trade and commerce, Wuxi is another city located on the banks of Yangtze river in China, on the CRDA radar. Officials will also inspect Masdar, a planned city in the United Arab Emirates. constructed about 17 km from Abu Dhabi.
