Ahmedabad has added another feather to its cap by bagging a silver medal at the Shanghai World Expo-2010 in China.

Ahmedabad was the only city in India to have its own pavilion at Urban Best Practices Area in the expo, based on the theme of ‘Better City Better Life’. Pondicherry’s heritage was showcased at a stall in the Indian pavilion.

Belgium walked away with a gold medal. The International Selection Committee (ISC), which included representatives of UNESCO, ADB, OECD, UCLG and World Bank, selected 80 cities from 233 countries across the globe. Around 7.5 crore people visited the expo in six months.

“Around three crore people visited our pavilion in the expo,” said IP Gautam, municipal commissioner of Ahmedabad.

The Shanghai Expo had provided $3 lakh as grant for building the pavilion. The civic body had created a facade of Haveli along with the bust of Mahatma Gandhi in the pavilion. The municipal corporation had sent the design and the façade was made by Chinese workers. Moreover, the corporation had roped in local people to provide information to the visitors in Chinese and English.

The civic body had sent eight officials of Sabarmati River Front and Ahmedabad Janmarg Ltd to Shanghai, to train the team roped in to provide information about the city and its urban development projects.

Mahatma Gandhi’s bust and some of the panels of Haveli, which were exhibited in the Shanghai expo, have been selected for display in the permanent exhibition.

The civic body had planned to send the corporators to Shanghai in a phased manner, but that did not happen because of the civic body elections.

Commissioner Gautam also said that various urban development projects such as e-governance and property tax recovery, Sabarmati Riverfront Development, slum networking project, BRTS along with others have been acknowledged.

Source by DnaIndia