Five winning cities of Guangzhou Int’l Award for Urban Innovation announced
The five winning cities and one popular city out of the 15 finalists have been announced on Friday at the Award Dinner for Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong Province.
The winning cities included Milan (Italy), Guadalajara (Mexico), Mezitli (Turkey), Wuhan (China) and New York (United States) as well as Surabaya (Indonesia) as the online popular city.
“We deliberated about the following questions in terms of the criteria that determine the results before we made the final decision. Are the initiatives really innovative and original? Do the initiatives exert significant influence and are they particularly relevant to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)? Are the initiatives able to help other cities cope with similar challenges?” said Celia Wade-Brown, chair of the Jury, said at the award dinner.
Through fierce debates, the initiatives of five cities were finally singled out by four standards of innovation, effectiveness, practicability and influence.
Milan’s food policy combines global governance with urban governance. It is a new model of urban governance which is based on an integrated approach among public agencies, social organizations, research bodies and the private sector.
Guadalajara’s citizen-led metropolitan coordination brings citizens to the core of the decision-making process, recognizing their vital roles not only in the identification of main metropolitan challenges but also in the design of solutions, which is the first of its nature in the history of the city and Mexico.
Mezitli’s women producers market provides equal rights to economic resources for more than 6,000 vulnerable women who lack of source of income and insurance, which contributes to greater gender equality and helps strengthen policies and legislation.
Wuhan’s Jinkou landfill restoration project transform some of Asia’s largest landfills into a national urban-ecological landmark and a major recreational eco-park, making the Zhanggong Dike, the previously 30-kilometer-long “grey belt”, to a “green belt”.
The project was designed to restore and rebuild the area as the main venue of the 10th China International Garden Expo.
New York’s city strategy One NYC has the synergies with SDGs, therefore “Global Vision, Urban Action” program was established to highlight the links as a platform for exchange of best practices. The key innovation of the project identifies the SDGs as a framework to engage other cities on common issues that impact the urban community.
Prior to the award-presentation part, the Guangzhou Declaration was released at the event. It says that cities, regardless of country and size, should be the builders of world peace, contributors to global development and defenders of the international order, adhere to the path of peaceful development, cooperation and win-win, and make unremitting efforts to build a community of human destiny and build a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, tolerance, cleanliness and beauty.
An artistic performance such as folk dance, male and female solo, martial arts, acrobatic dance were also staged at the Dinner, showing unique culture of Guangzhou and winning rounds of big applause.
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