City Finance Rankings and City Beauty Competition

Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs has recently released the draft guidelines for a new ranking system of cities based on their financial performance and beautification.

What is the City Finance Rankings?

• The City Finance Rankings aims to evaluate, recognize and reward urban local bodies based on 15 indicators across 3 financial parameters i.e., resource mobilization, expenditure performance and fiscal governance systems.
• It will rank cities based on their score under one of the 4 population categories:

1. Above 4 million
2. 1 to 4 million people
3. 100,000 to 1 million
4. Less than 100,000

• The top 3 performing cities in each of these categories will be recognized and rewarded at the national level and within each state or state cluster.
• The purpose of this ranking is to recognize the ULBs’ current financial health and identify areas where they can improve upon.
• It will serve as a motivation for cities to implement municipal finance reforms.
• It will highlight the outcomes achieved by municipalities at the municipal and state levels and provide critical insights for policymakers about the state of finances of ULBs.

City Beauty Competition

• The “City Beauty Competition” aims to encourage and recognize efforts taken by the ULBs to transform cities and wards across India and create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
• Wards and public spaces of the cities will be ranked based on the five broad pillars:

1. Accessibility
2. Amenities
3. Activities
4. Aesthetics
5. Ecology

• The purpose of the competition is to recognize the most beautiful wards and beautiful public places at the city level.
• The top-performing wards will be felicitated at the city and state levels.
• At the city level, the most beautiful public places in cities i.e., waterfronts, green spaces, tourist/heritage spaces and market/commercial places would be awarded first at the state level. They will then be shortlisted to be awarded at the national level.
• Competition amongst the cities and wards across India would encourage ULBs to improve their basic infrastructure and make urban spaces beautiful, inclusive and sustainable.
• The assessment of the wards and cities will be made by an independent jury that would consist of experts from different fields like urban planning, engineering, design, cultural expert, environmentalists etc.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2022

Category: Reports & Indexes Current Affairs