Urban innovative initiatives by Milan of Italy, Guadalajara of Mexico, Wuhan of China, Mezitli of Turkey and New York of the U.S. have won this year’s Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation (Guangzhou Award) on December 7th.

Celia Wade-Brown, chairman of the jury, said, “we have been through intensive discussion considering whether the initiative is innovative and original; Whether it has substantial impact on global challenges and is able to help other cities to cope with similar problems.”

The jury made the decision based on the initiatives’ scale, geographic location and the problems they have solved. In addition, Surabaya of Indonesia was selected as the online popular city.

This year, 193 cities from 66 countries attended the award with 273 innovation projects, and 15 among which were shortlisted and invited to share their insights during the three-day-event.

One of the winning initiatives, the Milan Food Policy, is an innovation framework dedicated to a more sustainable food system regarding the process of production, transformation, logistics, distribution, consumption and waste.

Andrea Magarini, the Food Policy Coordinator of Mayor’s Office of Milan, said the city started working on the policy in 2015 with an integrated cross-sectoral approach involving public agencies, social organizations, research bodies and the private sector. Now they are in the phrase of implementation and created a series of actions such as waste tax reduction, waste donate and short supply chain.

Magarini added that Guangzhou has already been linked via the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international pact signed by 180 cities and committed to make food systems in urban areas more equitable and sustainable. “Guangzhou is one of the very first cities that participated in the pact, and won an award in the first edition of our award,” he said.

The Guangzhou Award is co-sponsored by UCLG, Metropolis and the City of Guangzhou, aiming to inspire urban planners with cases and experiences brought by cities from all over the world.

Reported by Jasmine Yin

Edited by Wing Zhang