Smart City, liveable city, green city. Whatever your city, wherever your city, the NewCities Foundation wants to recognise it.
The NewCities Foundation fosters global dialogue and spurs cutting-edge knowledge on the world’s most pressing urban issues. By connecting citizens, businesses and governments, the Foundation hopes to accelerate the transition to sustainable cities by demonstrating how technology and innovation can tackle urban challenges.
In its first ever global Wellbeing City Award, the global non-profit organisation has a vision of recognising cities committed to urban wellbeing.
Urban Wellbeing
But what exactly is urban wellbeing?
A quick search on your favourite web browser, and you’ll notice the concept is couched in several other philosophies. The slow movement; a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of lifestyle, bringing nature into the urban environments, and more recently the rate of technological penetration and transformation.
The sprawling spiderweb of ideas make it difficult to crystallise the phrase’s essential qualities. Every individual and organisation have their own perception and expectations of what makes a city inhabitable and pleasurable. Yet, the confusing multidisciplinary approach to urban wellbeing is important. The different benchmarks set encourage civic engagement. Each citizen differs in their expectation of the urban experience. Dynamism catalysed by idealism provokes a healthy competition between cities to deliver the best urban experience.
Innovation for better communities is the bottom-line.
Who Should Apply
Riding on this ethos, the NewCities Foundation wants local governments to submit a report of their urban wellbeing initiatives.
Chairman of the NewCities Foundation, Mr John Rossant said, “The Wellbeing City Award has been created to showcase the most inspiring wellbeing initiatives from cities around the world and invite all cities to apply and be recognised for their commitment to improving the quality of life of their residents. We are excited to acknowledge local governments that serve as inspirations for other cities to improve wellbeing in their communities.”
Initiatives should have had a transformative impact on the wellbeing of their communities. This could be in the areas of public health, sustainable environment, community, and economy and opportunity.
Transformative initiatives are judged on the following criteria.
- The initiatives should have achieved a certain level of success as outlined in the initial proposal,
- Local governments must have demonstrated leadership in the project’s delivery,
- Multiple stakeholders must have been included in the process,
- The project should be replicable in other cities, and
- Initiatives should feature innovative methods.
A winner will be chosen for each of the aforementioned four categories of initiatives. Furthermore, an overall laureate will be chosen by the jury as a “Wellbeing City”. Winners will be revealed at a major NewCities event in Spring 2019.
How to Apply
Any non-municipal actor can put forth a nomination. NewCities will then invite nominated cities to submit an application. Nominations close on 15 October 2018, 2359 Eastern Time.
Should an application be filed upon NewCities’ invitation or by an official city representative, it must be done by 9 November 2018, 2359 Eastern Time. Cities of any and all sizes are invited to apply.
Interested applicants can obtain more information from the following website: http://www.newcities.org/wellbeingcity-award.
OpenGov Asia is a proud partner of the NewCities Foundation.
