Chandigarh, Apr 27 (IANS): There is a need for urban leaders and practitioners to 'think like a city' and understand the larger picture through the use of data and technology to be able to cater to the 'expanding' urban population of the future.

This was stated by Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director of the Smart Cities Mission, here on Thursday.

Kumar was addressing the Smart Cities' CEOs' conference on data and technology organised by the Chandigarh Smart City Ltd (CSCL) in coordination with Smart Cities Mission of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which was attended by around 200 delegates from 100 smart cities.

The objective of the conference was to enable peer learning and exchange of ideas that leads to development of the best practices across all the smart cities.

The CEO of Chandigarh Smart City Ltd, Anindita Mitra, said that the smart cities require smarter governance.

"Effective utilisation of technology is imperative for the management of smart cities. Very soon in Chandigarh, with the promising infrastructure created under the Smart Cities Mission, 5G rollout and our Micro Gati Shakti initiative, we will be experiencing new paradigms of business models, better services and enhanced sustainability of the city.

"We have created a detailed roadmap as to how every individual, every department shall be benefitted from our ICCC (Integrated Command and Control Centres) in the coming few months. We are making dedicated efforts to make Chandigarh a data-powered city," she said.

Chandigarh is the third smart city to host the conference on data and technology after Kochi and Panaji.

The conference included CEOs, CEOs and other officials from the Central government, state governments, partners and sponsors.