Guangzhou Award set to be practical

The Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation (Guangzhou Award), a major one of its kind to encourage urban management innovations, is set to make practical and significant contributions in the “century of the city”.

The award will distinguish itself from others for its “global perspective” and will develop into an ongoing system of learning for cities around the world and inspire new methods to deal with social, economic and environmental challenges.

Five winning urban innovative initiatives will be honored at the Guangzhou International Urban Innovation Conference (GIUIC) on Friday.

“The Guangzhou Award is not only the way to showcase excellence in cities around the world, but should also foster exchanges and learning,” Josep Roig, secretary general of the United Cities and Local Governments and Metropolis (UCLG), said.

The UCLG is a co-sponsor of the biennial award, initiated by the mayor of Guangzhou in 2012.

Members of the Technical Committee, formed by 11 urban practitioners and scholars from across the world, said the five winners will be selected from a shortlist of 15 finalists.

They have received a total of 259 submissions from 177 cities in 57 countries and regions.

“We applied multiple filters – for example, not only the novelty and impact of an innovation, but also questions of social inclusion and whether it benefits all classes of society,” said Technical Committee members Neal Peirce and Farley Peters, and Nicholas You, a strategic adviser to the award.

They continued: “A question that always loomed large: Can other cities adapt the innovation to their own circumstances?”

The committee members said that during the selection they applied “a group of clear criteria”, including “innovation”, “effectiveness”, “replicability”, and “significance”.

The Guangzhou Award joins an increasingly crowded field of awards, challenges and other means of recognizing good ideas for improving city governance.

Other newcomers include the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge, held respectively in the US in 2012 and Europe in 2014, and the Siemens-C40 Cities Climate Leadership Award in 2013 and 2014.

The World Mayor Award competition, begun in London in 2004, continues to flourish.

And all the new competitions join such established initiatives as the US National Civic League’s All-America City Awards, started in 1949, and Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government Awards, begun in 1985.

One thing that distinguishes the Guangzhou award is its global perspective, Peirce, Peters and You argue, noting most awards going to city governments are limited by theme or geography, or have a Western home addresses.

“The Guangzhou Award is not just worldwide in focus, but also follows the global march of urbanization toward the Far East,” they said.

And it is just a beginning.

The Guangzhou Institute for Urban Innovation will pool all submitted initiatives together for analysis. This think-tank, which was founded in 2012 simultaneously with the award, will then apply the findings on Guangzhou and share them with cities around the world.

“The city is promising to send learning missions to the 15 finalist cities in the competition, as well as urging other cities and urban scholars worldwide to take note of lessons to be learned from the winning cities. Major articles, books, and other follow throughs are envisioned,” Peirce, Peters and You said.

zhanghaizhou@chinadaily.com.cn