UN team to survey city’s quality of life

Bhubaneswar: UN-Habitat organisation has picked Bhubaneswar as one of the 11 pilot cities in the world for a survey to evaluate quality of life index.
In south Asia, it is the only city to have been included for the survey. The evaluation will help introduce transformative measures to improve urban living in Bhubaneswar. Also, the survey will reveal where Bhubaneswar stands in terms of basic citizen services and comfort of living in every aspect of urban life.
“A team of from UN country head office at New Delhi will come to Bhubaneswar to evaluate and rate the city’s quality of life by looking at the indicators/parameters that it has set.Besides safe commuting at nights for all, the basic facilities the survey will look for in a city is proportion of population having convenient access to public transport. Unemployment rate in the city in all age groups is also an important parameter to judge quality of life. The survey also emphasises if children in 24-59 months age group are developmentally on track in terms of health, learning and psychological wellbeing,” said BMC assistant commissioner N Ganesh.
In 2016, Bhubaneswar was adjudged the country’s number one smart city. Since then a lot of transformation has taken place in public transport, open space development, traffic management, slum development, children and disable-friendly parks, measures to reduce pollution, increasing green canopy, underground cable laying to do away with cluttered skyline, public, mobile, community and e-toilets.