A Dream City in the Making

The concept of smart cities is not new for India as the government introduced the Smart Cities Mission in 2015 and chose to develop 100 smart cities in the country. While these are brownfield developments and smaller in scale, creating a large greenfield industrial smart city from dust is a tough task to become a reality. Dholera for that matter is creating a new era in the development of greenfield industrial smart cities in India. The largest smart city under the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), Dholera is the first Greenfield Industrial Smart City in India. It is India's first Platinum Rated Greenfield Smart City by Indian Green Building Council. Once developed completely, Dholera Industrial Smart City will be bigger than Singapore City!

The beginning

The idea of developing an industrial smart city right from the scratch was conceived way back in 2011. It was a methodological development in a way in Dholera starting from all that is important for humanity at large. All aspects have been considered while at the planning stage itself. The studies and further planning took 2-3 years and finally environmental clearance was given by the Central Government in 2014. Few more studies have been carried out in 2015 to address some issues and simultaneously working on forming a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The SPV named Dholera Industrial City Development Limited (DICDL) was formed in January 2016 to enable a swift and efficient governance of the overall operations of building and maintaining the Dholera Industrial Smart City.

A futuristic planning

Dholera Industrial City is planned based on three core activities: Live, Play, and Work.

Live: Emphasize on social & recreational aspect has been taken care of while planning to complement industrial ecosystem. Around 40% area has been earmarked for residential and public utility. There will be planned communities, public transportation with dedicated cycle tracks & pedestrian lanes. The city will have proper urban design with public spaces like parks and social amenities.

Play: Around 10% area has been dedicated for recreational and tourism activities. Neighbourhood, community level parks and theme parks will be created, apart from art and culture zones. A canal front development has been initiated for social activities.

Work: The Industrial Zone is planned in half of the Activation Area. A state-of-art plug & play infrastructure will enable industrial players to set up their units with ease. SCADA & ICT enabled city utility operations, planned industrial zones, and walk-to-work concept will provide productive work environment.

In the first phase, an activation area of 22.54 sq km is being developed with 52% industrial, 28% residential and 4% high access corridors. The plug & play services at plot level and green parks within 400/800 m catchment will be unique in its way. A Solar Park (in CRZ 1B) at 8,500+ Ha land with total capacity of 4,400 MW will be developed. Tata Power has already implemented a 300 MW solar farm.

Advantage Dholera 

Dholera boasts of ready availability of large land parcels for development. Environment clearance for 920 sq km by MoEF & CC is already in place for the development of the industrial city. State-of-the-art infrastructure is being developed inside the area of the Dholera Industrial City with roads and rail connectivity, treated & recycled water, power supply, central effluent treatment plant (CETP), sewage treatment plant (STP) etc. The plug & play facilities help the industry players to set up their units easily while directly connecting the various utilities of water, power, communication and other services with the pre-installed facilities across the lengths and breadths of the area.

According to a senior official of DICDL, the benchmarking has been done as one of the best in the world. “Usually people come first and then creates infrastructure. Here, we are making the infrastructure first and then people come to stay. The infrastructure is designed in such a manner that for the next 30-50 years no need to think about digging for laying pipeline and other services. It is a dig-free city,” he says.

Infrastructure development at Dholera

Various infrastructure developments are happening at Dholera. These include the 144.9 km of 4-lane road network and internal roads with pre-planned utilities ducts and cycling tracks. Stormwater canal is of 6.5 km long and the total length of stormwater drainage in the activation area is 138 km. Water infrastructure include 100 MLD committed water from Narmada, Saurashtra branch canal located at a distance of 30 km; recycling of the 100 per cent of wastewater generated and supply back to industries. Water treatment plant of 50 MLD capacity is to be commissioned by Q3 of 2023 which can be scaled up to 150 MLD. For Treated water supply, mass balancing reservoirs of 10 million litres and two elevated service reservoirs with total capacity of 2.25 million litres are there. Recycled water supply is enabled through two mass balancing reservoirs with total capacity of 27.5 million litres and seven elevated service reservoirs (ESRs) with 9 million litres capacity. CETP with 20 MLD capacity is under construction which can be scaled up to 60 MLD in future. The project is under construction and is expected to be commissioned by Q3 2023. STP with 10 MLD capacity is under construction, which can be scaled up to 30 MLD in future. STP project is under construction stage and is expected to be commissioned by Q3 of 2023. Around 40% lower power tariff than leading Indian cities, with presence of two discoms - Torrent Power and UGVCL and 33/66 KV of Torrent Power operational substation will power Dholera Industrial City. Solar park with a capacity of 4,400 MW will be developed. The Phase-I will have 1,000 MW out of which, 300 MW has been developed by Tata Power. Investors can opt for green power by setting up solar plant.

The construction of the greenfield Dholera International Airport is in full swing which will improve the air connectivity of Dholera with domestic and international destinations. The under-construction Ahmedabad-Dholera 4-lane Expressway project will significantly reduce the travel time between Dholera and Ahmedabad to 60 minutes. The Bhimnath-Dholera freight line connecting to DFC will improve the rail connectivity of Dholera with the major business and industrial hubs of the country.

Ready to host investment

Dholera focuses to attract investment in non-polluting and evolving sectors such as Aerospace & Defence, Heavy Engineering, Auto, Ancillaries & EV, Solar & Renewable Energy, Pharma & Bio Tech, Electronics & Semiconductor, IT & ITES, Agro and Food Processing. The senior official of DICDL says, “We are looking for non-polluting industries to set up facilities here because this is a city being developed and not an industrial estate. So, the quality of life of people living in Dholera should be world-class.”

Looking ahead

Once the planned expressway, airport, and railway projects are completed and operational, the connectivity will be improved significantly and there will be huge advantage for industry to grow in Dholera Industrial City. The advantage of Dholera is that it has the connectivity of road, rail, air and sea.

This is a largescale project and challenges are not less for such kind of projects. It is a mix of industrial, residential and social infrastructure. The execution of the project needs to be at the right pace which will be a challenging task. “However, we are prepared to face any kind of challenges,” the official states.

The Phase 1 of the Dholera Industrial City is almost ready with 90-95 per cent of the infrastructure work done. It is expected to be 100 per cent ready by the third quarter of the financial year 2023-24. With dedicated solar farms are being set up, in future, Dholera will be the only city which will be run completely on solar energy, according to the official.

India is celebrating ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' and by the time of 100 years of independence, India is expected to be one of the developed countries in the world. “I am sure that Dholera will be one of the top destinations in India by then. It will be above metro cities offering better quality of life with everything systematic, it will really be a smart city. The city has been planned in such a way that it will be at the forefront of the cities in India. We are not keen on selling out Dholera just like that, but it should be systematic and we need the kind of industry that will fit in this city. This will be a dream city!” he concludes on a promising note.

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