Bolpur, a fairly popular tourist city in West Bengal, shows us that while it excels in certain aspects in contrast to how bigger cities perform, it also lacks in certain areas where it has higher rates of energy consumption.

The inner core area of the city is densely populated, which gives it the benefit of heat retention effect, as a result of which, heat from the surrounding areas is much less likely to be able to penetrate into the core. Consequently, less heat requires less artificial cooling, which reduces energy consumption. It also gives the added advantage of having highly accessible neighborhoods, where one can move within the city using active transport. Majority of the people here have their own bicycles and motorcycles which they use for transportation purposes.

Water bodies are also fairly abundant and uniformly distributed all over the city, making it easy for evapotranspiration to take place and effectively decrease the average summer temperatures and therefore, reducing the energy consumption due to artificial cooling mechanisms.

Although artificial cooling with the help of electricity is always high in demand, one hurdle that many small cities in India face today, Bolpur being no exception, is the lack of 100% coverage of electricity. Even though, electricity generation is not entirely a 100% efficient process yet, there is no doubt that electricity is still the most efficient medium of utilization of energy.

Bolpur, although it currently lacks any solar power generation measures, has an applaudable resolution of powering all government buildings through solar power within this decade. This is something which small-sized cities can take inspiration from, as solar power generation has a very low barrier in terms of infrastructure requirements in comparison to other popular renewable sources of electricity.

Bolpur also has the added benefit of being near an area with high geo-thermal potential (Bakreshwar). While the infrastructure cost of a geo-thermal power generation system is high, it is a worthy long-term investment.

While building geo-thermal power generation infrastructure is an expensive and difficult process, a district cooling system is something that any city can install and readily benefit from. It can cut down the commercial and institutional cooling load by up to 50%. In the case of Bolpur, there are two energy intensive locations which can make use of this system to save energy.

In addition to the above, Bolpur can also immensely benefit from replacing its entire HPSV street lamps infrastructure with LED street lamps, as they can cut down on street lamp energy requirements by half.

Finally, to make sure that the power distribution mechanism is also functioning efficiently, smart metering system can be implemented wherever possible, as it can monitor and prevent T&D losses. Since small cities have lesser population, the installation cost of smart meters can be significantly lower and therefore, can be a great investment to monitor citywide electricity usage and improve energy efficiency of the city.

Vadodara's water is sourced from both the surface and the ground. Surface water is obtained from Ajwa Dam and Narmada Canal. The water is then treated at Nimeta and Khanpur WTPs respectively before being directed towards the distribution network. On the other hand, ground water is obtained majorly from Mahi river bed.

Speaking of the distribution network, we find OHTs and GSRs distributed spatially conforming to the development footprint. Supply duration analysis shows that most of the city gets water for an hour a day. A few zones, however, benefit from 24 hours supply.  Supply demand gap analysis reveals that the southern parts of the city have a supply shortage.

Performance analysis as per Service Level Benchmarks shows that Vadodara has a few serious issues like a high 26% Non-Revenue water, a very low metering reach and cost inefficiency.

Although the supplied water quantity is good enough for the present population, it is found that more water will be required for serving the projected population of 2030. This rejuvenation will require augmentation of water sources, upgrading the distribution network by increasing the network reach and installing new storage.

Haridwar is a vastly popular hub for religious tourism, attracting hundreds of thousands of devotees from all around the country annually, resulting in the development of an economy which is immensely dependent on the service sector. To reduce this over-dependency on one particular sector, the state government has been developing the outskirts of the city as an industrial estate since the last two decades. This has resulted into a huge economic boom, with manufacturers from all over the nation arriving to develop industrial units while availing the highly lucrative incentives from the state government. This has not only increased direct employment opportunities for the state residents by a considerable margin, but also the indirect jobs which develop organically around manufacturing hubs.

Tourist markets are incredibly popular here, however, they are very seasonal in nature and hence not a stable earning mechanism for the workforce. This has resulted in a high concentration of informal markets in Haridwar. During off-season, workers have to depend on the informal sector for earning livable wage. Tourism oriented businesses, for example, food and accommodation, are also inevitably dominant here.

The wholesale and retail market prevalent here is currently running at its capacity and hence urgently requires headroom for the ever-growing permanent and floating population.

Finally, when we analyze the status of commercial activities hierarchy as per the URDPFI standards, we find shortages in spatial area allocated to the district center, the community center and the wholesale mandi.