The 5th Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation (Guangzhou Award) is ongoing from November 8 to 13.

Created in 2012, the Guangzhou Award has been successfully held for five cycles. This year it has received 273 submissions from 175 cities in 60 countries and regions. Thus far, the shortlisted cities have been released. Is your city on the list?

Vienna, Austria

How can cities be more child-and youth-friendly?

Over the past 50 years, Vienna has shifted from a shrinking and aging city into a young and growing one. The project Werkstadt Junges Wien (Vienna Children and Youth Program) organizes more than 1,300 participatory activities, enabling children and young people of all age groups and backgrounds to connect to a process where they can freely articulate their own ideas for the city.

The initiative goes the next step by aiming for a more structural, long-term and large-scale approach. The objective is to put social inclusion of all children and young people living and growing up in Vienna at the heart of policy-making and city administration.

To date, the impressive result is 193 specific measures and actions underway across the city. The strategy has been adopted by the Vienna City Council and thus is a binding commitment.

São José Dos Pinhais, Brazil

Regular citizens become public health scouts. How does contain Yellow Fever?

São José Dos Pinhais has seen a surge in the number of Yellow Fever cases in recent years. To prevent outbreaks, the municipality has designed a public health campaign anchored by a mobile application (app) designed by the Brazilian government, SISS-Geo.

SISS-Geo allows anybody with a mobile phone to register and geo-code any sighting of dead animals or potentially contaminated areas with the municipal health department. The app transforms regular citizens into public health scouts, which helps public health departments expand their capacity to scan and scope environmental conditions.

The campaign has proven that the use of the SISS-Geo Platform for monitoring non-human primate health in real time cannot only give public health officials up to 2 months advance notice of an outbreak, time enough to inoculate thousands of people, but it also allows time to develop animal protection initiatives that help protect wildlife.

Chongqing, China

How to deal with urban medical waste disposal in emergency under COVID-19?

The emergency solution, combining novel technology to deal with urban medical waste disposal and strict supervision for hospitals, was implemented in Chongqing to ensure effective regulation of medical wastes, thus preventing secondary infection and virus spread.

At the same time, Chongqing Zhide Thermal Power Industry Co., Ltd. provided complete sets of equipment and technology to Wuhan. It helped China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group(CECEP) to construct an emergency disposal center for medical wastes of COVID-19 to process medical wastes.

This initiative provides a good model for emergency disposal of medical waste for improving urban safety resilience under pandemic and also alerts other cities in the world the importance of medical waste disposal in controlling the spread of disease.

Capital Region, Denmark

How can bicycles be used to ease the traffic congestion?

30 municipalities of the Capital Region of Denmark have joined forces to create the cycle superhighways – a regional network of cycling infrastructure that gives long distance commuters the opportunity to commute by bicycle across municipal borders on cohesive and correlating routes.The aim of this initiative is to make more than 850 km of cycle superhighways in the region helping to decrease congestion, improving health and saving the cities and municipalities in the region from large amounts of CO2 and NOx.So far nine routes with a total distance of 174 km have been implemented.

Effects of this new infrastructure are already showing. On the cycle superhighways there has been an average 23% increase in number of cyclists. 14% of new cyclists used to travel by car.

Quito, Ecuador

Reduce carbon footprint before erecting new buildings?

In 2016, Ecuador’s capital city, Quito passed the Eco Efficiency Ordinance for the Metropolitan District of Quito, which incentivizes the construction of high density ‘green’ buildings on key transportation nodes and with provisions for affordable housing. As important, the Ordinance deploys the concept of land value capture to ensure that the city retains its share of the land value increments generated by greater density and land use allowances in designated zones.The Ordinance not only curbs on urban expansion, but it also bolsters community and developer support for green building construction. The city calculates that it has generated approximately $10.7 million in revenue from the sale of development rights.

Odisha, India

To ensure the livelihood for the urban poor

The national lockdown caused by COVID-19 in India has led to an exodus of the urban workforce, which is composed largely of migrants from lagging parts of the country working in informal sector in the primary cities.

Migrants from Odisha also returned to their home state. In response, the provincial government launched Urban Wage Employment Initiative (UWEI) whereby the urban workforce has been guaranteed a minimum number of workdays annually at specified daily wage.

The workers are being engaged in public works and the resources are drawn from on-going welfare schemes of the national and provincial governments. In addition to mitigating the economic stress due to the pandemic of the impoverished urban labour force, the provincial government has adopted the initiative as a long-term measure for poverty alleviation.

Berhampur, India

Is the traditional “view of cleanliness” broken down?

Disposal of faecal sludge creates health and environmental challenges for the city. In response, Berhampur Municipal Corporation passed a resolution to adopt the Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) Regulations 2018 making it mandatory for all cesspool emptier vehicles to dispose faecal waste at the treatment plant.

In addition, it also passed resolutions to partner with local women’ collectives, in each component of FSSM value chain, for promotion of mechanized desludging, and operation and management of the septage treatment plant in the city through a service contract.

Women Self-Help Groups have been engaged in building sanitary toilets for safe containment of faecal waste, promoting mechanized emptying of septic tanks, operation and management of septage treatment plants and reuse of treated sludge. The initiative has enhanced the incomes of the collectives, ensured community participation and ownership for sustainable FSSM and promoted women empowerment.

Bandung, Indonesia

Local malnourished children case brought down to zero

Bandung is the second largest city of Indonesia. The Riung Bandung Public Health Service proposed an initiative in an attempt to overcome the challenges of malnourished and stunting children and to reduce stunting rate and mortality. The initiative adopts strategies to ensure that the supplementary food is not only conveyed to the targeted children, but also totally eaten up without compulsion, such as to improve the taste in addition to nutrition of the processed food. The food is delivered to target children with motorcycle taxis by women organization.

The initiative has directly improved a nutritional status of children under-five in the pilot district. Malnourished children status decreased from 29 cases in 2013 to 0 cases in 2019. The initiative also has facilitated its members, who are almost females, with food producing skill and entrepreneurship passion. By developing community-based cooking centre that empowered local communities in handling malnutrition, processing healthy food, as well as conveying the food to children, the initiative succeeded in reducing the prevalence rate of malnourished and stunting children.

Dannieh Municipalities, Lebanon

Encourage youth participation and use technology in the fight against the pandemic

In order to effectively respond to the COVID-19, the Union of Dannieh Municipalities has established an Emergency Response Plan with 15 committees of volunteers from youth with the support of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).

This initiative had relied on the use of technology. The use of shared folders and WhatsApp groups has helped facilitating communication between committees inside the cell and with people. The initiative connects the municipal staff, other municipalities under its umbrella, the 15 committees, citizens and the community at large with information quickly and effectively, through using multimedia and technology as well as traditional means. The initiative gave full play to citizens’ strength by encouraging them to their abilities and skills to combat the pandemic.

The Municipality of Antananarivo, Madagascar

Enhance the resilience of the city food systems through three innovative initiatives

The first initiative aims to promote Urban Agriculture (UA) using a mobile application named ‘Mamboly Aho’ ( ‘I Farm’ in English). It allows information sharing between the Municipality and its inhabitants about urban agriculture, breeding, and waste management.

The second initiative aims to implement the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact monitoring framework (MUFPP). Antananarivo has selected 6 from the MUFPP indicators (3 criteria of selections) to be used to revise the City’s priorities related to Food.

The third initiative aims to install vegetable gardens in schools in order to fight against malnutrition among schoolchildren by offering them a balanced meal while offering a program of community production, environmental education.

The Municipality of Antananarivo of Madagascar is enhancing the resilience of the city food systems through these three innovative initiatives.

Breda, Netherlands

Allowing trees and bushes to grow their roots and local flora and fauna to prosper

As in many cities and towns, Breda houses rivers and creeks, often constrained in concrete, deep walls and lacking green areas. Breda’s initiative ‘GreenQuays’ is centred on an innovative Nature Inclusive Quay (NIQ) technology. Newly developed materials (type of brick stone) and innovative technical implementation approach shall replace traditional concrete walls and extend below the parallel walkway or street, allowing trees and bushes to grow their roots and local flora and fauna to prosper. This technical solution is supported by social innovation, through applying an intensive participatory co-design process, targeting the engagement of external stakeholders and citizens.

Saint Louis, Senegal

Adopting inter-municipal approach for the conservation of the mangroves

1,000 hectares of mangroves in Saint Louis of Senegal are threatened with extinction due to climatic and anthropogenic pressures. To restore the mangroves, the Departmental Council of Saint Louis in Senegal developed an innovative approach to environmental governance, which integrated the restoration of mangroves ecosystems across three municipalities with strategies for addressing urgent urban climate challenges and enhancing livelihoods through the promotion of resilient and structured economic activities around mangroves.

Over the nine years of the intervention, more than 50 ha. of mangrove have been regenerated, which is equivalent to a sequestration rate of 350 tons of carbon annually. The mangrove growth rate has risen to 7% per year and the clearance rate is down by 25%. Nearly 80,000 people from over 50 organizations were involved in the initiative, representing local authorities, academics and environmental experts who were engaged to support the local private sector, civil society organizations and community organizations.

Cape Town, South Africa

Waste turned into resources?

Along the years since its establishment in 2013, the Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme (WISP) adopted a more progressive approach beyond landfill diversion to conducting material flow analysis (MFA) on industrial areas to determine opportunities for interventions to increase resource efficiency. It has evolved and its efficiency has improved.

As resource exchanges were completed, and case studies created, WISP’s credibility was established and the programme was better able to recruit new members into the network. Thus, gain sustainability. Also, Efforts are put into integrating informal businesses from neighbouring communities like waste pickers with established businesses for mutual benefit.

Los Angeles, the United States

Developing and sharing open-source tools

Seeking to improve the lives of L.A. residents via the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in order to develop and share SDG tools in a transparent way, Los Angeles is pioneering two open-source mechanisms for SDG action at the sub-national level: the SDG Data Reporting Platform (Open SDG) and the SDG Activities Index. While Open SDG was developed for national statistics, L.A. is the first city to adapt it for sub-national reporting.

The SDG Activities Index is a living, crowd-sourced encyclopaedia of organizations advancing the SDGs in L.A. It is searchable, exportable, and allows residents to build shared capacity and learn about the SDGs.