Urban management issues are increasingly becoming important for sustaining economic activities in the country and widely affect the quality of life of urban citizens. Given the pace of its growth, Chennai is facing challenges of rapid urbanisation like many other cities around the world.

Various stakeholders—residents of the city, employers across the entire range of industries, small and medium firms, bodies like Rotary, industry associations, NGOs and community organizations—are acutely aware of the challenges that the city faces on its infrastructure like traffic and transportation.  These groups of institutions and individuals have demonstrated a clear commitment to the city over several years. Collectively, they also have the technical capacity and commitment to ensure that various government initiatives are successful. The challenge is to harness these collective energies onto a single platform that can make the whole larger than the sum of the parts.

Chennai City Connect (CCC) is an initiative specifically meant to play this role, by bringing various urban stakeholders outside government together onto a single platform. This also helps government respond in a constructive, collaborative manner to the voices coming from outside government, and create value-added partnerships. The aim of CCC is, among other things, to assist governmental agencies by providing the knowledge base and support to help the development on urban infrastructure and services.