With its eyes firmly set on hosting the 2036 Summer Olympics, Ahmedabad’s apex planning body—the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA)—is mulling an ambitious 20-year development plan. The standard practice is to draft a 10-year development plan.
For the same, the AUDA plans to involve leading institutions in the city. For example, the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO, Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG) will be tasked with managing the satellite imagery. The 2021-2041 plan will focus on developing the 20 adjoining villages of Ahmedabad in a peripheral range of 5 km radius outside the SP Ring Road.
“A number of representations were made to the government by developers demanding a comprehensive long-term plan for the city, as many of the objectives of the earlier decadal plans were not being fulfilled within the prescribed time limits,” said a senior AUDA official.
To draft the plan, AUDA first plans to constitute a Development Plan (DP) unit with a separate ledger account for the overhead costs. The entire process will be headed by a chairman and will comprise an urban planner, GIS expert, GIS analyst, GIS operator, computer-aided design (CAD) operator and a DP unit. A private agency will be part of the preparation of the DP report, which will also include planning schools of two universities, the AUDA said.
The Gujarat government is in the process of building a large sports complex in Ahmedabad, keeping in mind the possibility of India hosting the first ever Summer Olympic Games in 2036.
In November 2021, the AUDA said in a media statement that it has “initiated the next phase of activities to start a dialogue with the IOC for the candidature of Ahmedabad as a host city for a future edition of Summer Olympics” after assessing the infrastructure requirements.
“Hosting the games is an opportunity for Ahmedabad to become a global sporting as well as a tourist destination and will give an opportunity to showcase its culture and heritage worldwide,” the November release read.
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