Bogotá, Colombia

Bogotá’s winning proposal for the Global Mayors Challenge 2021 focuses on “care blocks” that tackle the issue of the unpaid care burden falling disproportionately on women. These blocks will include a wide variety of support measures designed to reduce subsequently women’s unpaid care work and to spark a cultural shift.

Butuan, Philippines

Butuan faces high rates of food insecurity due to issues around local food production. The city therefore proposes to improve the ineffective agricultural market through “AgriBOOST”. This tool will give farmers predictive data that help with decision-making in terms of type and quantity of crops. Therefore this tool is the reason for the Global Mayors Challenge 2021 nomination.

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Freetown is providing monetary incentives for communities to replant trees to offset deforestation. This tree-trading market will support reforestation. To sum up, each new tree will be tagged geospatially, creating tree tokens that can be sold, bought, and traded.

Hermosillo, Mexico

Hermosillo wants to tackle two challenges – women’s underemployment and very low rates of waste recycling – with its “Biciclando” programme. The idea is to employ women who have lost their job in the pandemic for home-recyclable collections made by e-cargo bike.

Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul saw overwhelming demand for social aid during the first year of the pandemic. As a response, city officials created a solidarity programme called “Pay-it-forward”. Therefore this programme matches people burdened by unpaid utility bills with those willing to provide financial assistance.

Kigali, Rwanda

Residents in Kigali’s informal settlements face challenges such as unsanitary water, sanitation and hygiene services. At the same time, the maintenance fees for these utilities are disproportionately high. Therefore, the city is introducing smart waste-sensor technology in informal settlements.

Kumasi, Ghana

Poorly maintained public toilets and open defecation are problems in Kumasi. To address this, the city is training unemployed youth to build low-cost toilets for households in needs. These toilets will have bio-digesters and technologies compatible with the city’s infrastructure so that the waste can be reused as manure on surrounding farms.

Paterson, USA

This city struggles with opioid-related overdoses and a lack of support for victims. In response, Paterson is creating the “RealFix” programme that will provide easy onboarding for medically assisted treatment and access to prescriptions within 90 minutes at any time.

Phoenix, USA

This city in Arizona is experiencing and increase in unemployment despite countless job postings. To bridge this divide, Phoenix is deploying “Career Mobility Units” to provide targeted support to job seekers.

Rochester, USA

Rochester is focusing on BIPOC women in construction jobs by engaging BIPOC women, employers and labour associations. Together, they intend to create pathways for the increased participation of BIPOC women, who make up 13 per cent of the city’s population, in the construction industry.

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Rotterdam has won the Global Mayors Challenge 2021 for its digital marketplace called “Rikx”. This marketplace intends to connect local social entrepreneurs to investors, supporting the delivery of innovative projects with unemployed, vulnerable parts of the population.

Rourkela, India

Rourkela struggles with lack of storage facilities for goods. This project will provide female entrepreneurs with access to cold-storage units, thus reducing food waste and after that allowing more time for produce to be sold.

Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius has created the programme “Vilnius as an Open School” to address the lack of educators’ digital skills, overcrowded public schools, and also outdated education systems. The reorganisation of the city’s education system is designed to make education more resilient and relevant to the future economy.

Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington also has been named as a winner of the Global Mayors Challenge 2021 for its digital twin model that coordinates community action across the city. To sum up this model is being scaled to address climate change and help the city move to a post-carbon future. It is resident-driven.

Lessons from the winning cities of the Global Mayors Challenge 2021

The Global Mayors Challenge is much more than a big honor for the winning cities. It is also an innovation competition that showcases creative, inspiring, and scalable urban solutions. After emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, many cities need inspiring solutions for the way forward.

In conclusion, the winning cities show that mayors must be original systems thinkers. They need to embrace the complexity in their cities and tackle multiple problems at once.

Global Mayors Challenge winners also know how to interact with today’s fast-moving global economy. Market forces can have challenging impacts on cities, but at the same time, cities can shape their urban markets to benefit residents and advance civic goals.

The winning projects also have the use of resident expertise in common. They showcase the need for a two-way government. The most effective mayors listen to what their residents have to say and then build projects and policies around that feedback.

The winning cities prove that cities responded to the pandemic with a lot of ambition and creativity. They showcase the positive legacy of this difficult time. And they demonstrate ways to make cities better, kinder, more sustainable, and more just.

Also interesting: Also Nairobi fights against Corona – urban planners think that the coronavirus crisis could give African cities a good opportunity to re-think their urban planning and development by putting people’s needs in the centre of attention. Read more about it.