Singapore, AP partner for capital city master plan

Singapore and Andhra Pradesh governments on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding wherein the former would develop a master plan for the new capital city to come up in Guntur-Vijayawada region.

After the memorandum was inked here at the State Secretariat, AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and S Iswaran, Minister in the Singapore PM’s Office and Minister for Home affairs, Trade and Industry, Singapore government, said both the governments were committed to the development of the capital region and the master plan is likely to be ready within six months.

Environmentally stable Naidu said he was keen to develop a capital city which would be better than the best city anywhere in the world. “Our idea is to develop a capital which is environmentally sustainable. The experience and expertise of Singapore will be helpful for Andhra Pradesh,” he said.

Iswaran said, “India and Singapore have strong bilateral ties at leadership and government level, and this is expected to get better as we engage in more areas – both business to business and people to people ties.”

Smart cities Mentioning about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to develop smart cities, he said that Singapore is keen to share its expertise and learning in building smart cities in China, Vietnam and other places. And this is one opportunity to develop a smart city, he said.

The master plan covering urban planning, land use and infrastructure, to be ready by June 2015, is aimed at charting out a broader design of the new city infrastructure factoring local requirements. “We simply cannot slap a Singapore model on AP. We need to develop something that is suitable here,” he said.