Highlights

Amaravati or any other proposed New City must take advantage of all the geographic features and water bodies within it in a planned manner.

Amaravati must be a city for everyone – but everyone also, has a responsibility to keep it clean and valuable – tendency to overcrowd, demand free space, avoid implementation of rules, leads to chaos and will soon devalue the city to the same or worse levels than other old cities.

Key concepts

• Specific appropriate and new Municipal Rules and Laws should be legislated for the City region. These should be announced in advance to avoid confusion and infructuous negotiations thereafter.
• The Municipal Corporation should be fully empowered and the City Mayor should be directly elected and be autonomous from the legislature.
• Slum prevention – Growing urbanization is the order of the day and a new, smart, city will attract ever more rural and small-town residents who will seek to take advantages without due contribution. Even the best planned city can soon be degraded into a series of circles of excellence surrounded by slums if due care is not taken from the beginning.
• Equitable Property Taxes: – All citizens have equal rights and hence, must also, pay for use of roads, property and facilities proportionate to their usage. The charges for water and electricity can be subsidized (never offered FREE) for the bottom 20 percent up to a reasonable limit by an extra charge on the top 10 percent users. This should be the only concession or subsidy allowed, for everything else the taxes (property, garbage collection etc) should be on a laid down basis that accounts for extra payment only on a standard formula applicable to all and which takes into account, location, road frontage, number of units/bed rooms/kitchens/ bathrooms and usage i.e. residential, commercial or mixed. Every facility needs to be paid for in order to avoid misuse, even public toilets. Only drinking water for immediate consumption in public spaces can be free.

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