Guangzhou awards highlight urban innovation

The UK city of Bristol, the Colombian county of Antioquia and the Chinese city of Hangzhou picked up two awards each at the 2014 International Awards for Urban Innovation, which took place last Friday in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province in southern China.

“This is far better than an Oscar, this is about real life,” declared George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, on picking up the award for his city’s smart city programme. “This is about changing people’s lives.”

Earlier, Bristol had been announced as top city voted by the media from the fifteen shortlisted entries. Antioquia was voted best project from the shortlist in the public vote and also won one of the five awards for its educational parks programme.

Hangzhou received a special award as top city voted by citizens online and later on the night, it picked up an award for its cycle-share programme, the first in China in 2008 and the biggest in the world serving 300,000 people a day.

The two other cities receiving awards were: Dakar, capital of Senegal, for its groundbreaking municipal finance programme, which used bond finance to develop a new space for street traders; and Christchurch, New Zealand, whose transitional programme of community initiatives has seen the city post a remarkable recovery from the devastating earthquakes of 2011.

“I’m absolutely delighted that Christchurch City Council’s ‘Christchurch: Our Ever Evolving City’ initiative has won such a prestigious international award,” Paul Lonsdale, Councillor in Christchurch, told Cities Today. “These community-led transitional initiatives have encouraged participation from the people of Christchurch and together we have created special places that are putting Christchurch on the map.”

Lonsdale led the Re:START programme, one of the post-earthquake initiatives, which used shipping containers to provide a place for residents to do business in the Central Business District, where 80 percent of the buildings had been destroyed. There are over 50 businesses now trading in the container mall alongside market stalls and street entertainers.

“It demonstrates how the community, Council staff, Mayor and Councillors have all worked together to ensure these transitional projects bring some joy and colour to a city bouncing back following a natural disaster,”  commented Lonsdale. “We are creating a ‘new normal’ which will benefit our city for a long time to come.”

The five laureates were selected from a shortlist of 15 cities and won US$20,000 each. The jury included Jatin Modi, Past President of UCLG ASPAC and Marcelo Ebrard, former Mayor of Mexico City.

“They were difficult decisions to make but it has been a wonderful experience,” said Modi, President of the All India Institute of Local Self-Government.

Guangzhou is using the case studies as the basis for study tours and further city-to-city exchanges on innovation and has produced a special publication through its Institute for Urban Innovation to analyse the lessons from the previous awards held in 2012.

“I encourage other cities to take part in this awards process and by doing to encourage local governments to work closely with their communities to foster innovation, creativity and resilience,” said Lianne Dalziel, Mayor of Christchurch.

A full report on the awards including case studies on the shortlisted initiatives will be included in the next issue of Cities Today.