pune the city will soon get a national centre for urban innovation which will be of help to all smart cities in the countrymunicipal commisioner kunal kumar who just returned from a uk tour said the pune municipal corporation pmc has proposed to start the centre the city has join hands with future cities of catapult team an organisation based in the united kingdom from its london urban innovation centre catapult team accelerates urban ideas to market to improve economy and make cities better they bring together the uks top architects engineers designers academics and business professionalstheir work currently focuses on three core themes promoting healthy cities building resilience in urban infrastructure and designing strategies to help cities with finance for using smarter technologiesthe commissioner accompanied by civic officials and industry leaders recently visited the uk to study their initiatives in urban transport and solid waste managementwe have spoken to the state and union governments about this tie up and formation of the centre the stake holders of this centre will include representatives of pune other smart cities academicians corporators state and centre said kumarthe commissioner said the centre will provide a platform for young innovators the technological as well as nontechnological solutions will be developed at this centre the work will commence in six months kumar said that pmc will seek help from experts and organisations from the uk to implement a public bicycle scheme metro rail project traffic control rooms defined software network for better civic services and mobilebased solutionsthe focus will be on creating an integrated transport plan it will have details of all types of transports including public transport and special scheme such as cycle under one roof the administration will complete the plan in a years time he saidkumars london visit which had coincided with the civic budget presentation in general body had kicked off a storm the then standing committee chairman ashwini kadam had presented the annual civic budget to the pmc general body on february 28 guardian minister girish bapat who was supposed to attend the meet had backed off from this tour when asked about the controversy kumar said the planning for the tour was on for a couple of months the host had taken a lot of efforts in organising study tours and joining hands with pune cancelling the tour at the last moment would have sent a wrong message it would have impacted badly on citys efforts of making a smart city he said that all the necessary permissions for the tour were sought some of them reached after they left for the visit