The 2023 Future City Awards were announced in Fuzhou, and 14 projects were finally awarded.
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On December 29, 2023, the first Future City Conference and Future City Award Ceremony 2023 was held in the Marine Economy Innovation Highland of Fuzhou, the host city, and the final ownership of the three major units and seven sub-awards was announced on the spot.
The event was initiated by 36Kr, hosted by the World Organization for Planning and Education (WUPEN), and provided academic support from the smart city team of the Chinese Academy of Planning and Planning (Beijing) Planning and Design Co., Ltd. The registration for the award was launched on November 13, and more than 110 projects were collected, covering blocks, communities, parks and urban areas in more than 30 cities across the country.
On December 8, the award held an online preliminary evaluation meeting, where project representatives made self-presentations and responded to questions from the judges, and all projects participating in the preliminary evaluation met the principle requirements that they were in the practical application stage and had been put into use for less than three years. 7 core sponsors and 12 annual judges scored the preliminary evaluation projects, and the final weighted average calculation, 37 projects with an average score of more than 80 points were shortlisted.
In the final evaluation session after that, Wu Zhiqiang, Chairman of the Jury and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Herzog, the special guest judge of the Award and Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, led the members of the jury to conduct comprehensive research and evaluation of the shortlisted projects, and finally selected the following 14 award-winning projects:
At the conference site, Huang Jianxin, Secretary of the Gulou District Committee of Fuzhou City of the Communist Party of China, delivered an opening speech at the conference, and invited the guests to communicate and cooperate with the Gulou to explore the infinite possibilities of the future city.
Wu Zhiqiang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chairman of the World Planning Education Organization, and Chairman of the Jury of the Award, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Urban Metaverse, Dreams Come True". Academician Wu emphasized that the restructuring of the global industrial chain has formed a new challenge for urban development, and cities need to be regenerated with vitality. The key to urban planning lies in the needs of people, planners should be people-oriented, and the metaverse also needs to use digital technology to empower people's lives, industrial development, and urban prosperity.
He believes that with the emergence of generative AI models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan, the competitive environment of artificial intelligence technology has changed dramatically, and it has also provided imagination for the planning and development of cities in the future.
Li Zheng, partner and senior vice president of 36Kr, said that the shortlisted projects reflect the three major trends of future urban development: AI and digitalization, sustainable development, and a return to people-oriented.
Three major development trends of the future city:
AI and digitalization for sustainable development Return to people-oriented
As the representative of the sponsor of the award, Li Zheng, partner and senior vice president of 36Kr, delivered a keynote speech at the first Future City Conference. Li Zheng said that the 37 shortlisted projects reflect the three major trends of future urban development: AI and digitalization, sustainable development, and a return to people-oriented.
Li Zheng, partner and senior vice president of 36Kr
First of all, AI and digitalization have become key factors that cannot be ignored in the planning of future cities. Many projects led or supported by technology companies, including Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Zhongguancun Science City City Brain, participated in the competition for the Future City Award 2023, fully demonstrating the important contribution of digital foundations to urban development. Looking to the future, AI and digital technologies will further improve urban efficiency by processing urban information data, promoting computing power to empower urban industrial clusters.
Secondly, in the context of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and ESG practices, sustainable development has become an important area that can not only contribute to society and the environment, but also bring benefits to enterprises. Among the projects participating in the Future City Awards, there are many cases that uphold the concept of green, low-carbon and sustainable development: such as new energy ecological complexes that integrate functions such as photovoltaics, energy storage, car charging, and offline experience of low-carbon products, as well as projects that attract local residents to participate in waste sorting, which not only use advanced technology, but also practice the sustainable business model of paid recycling.
Finally, returning to people-oriented is also one of the development trends of future cities. In the past, the city of the future was often seen as synonymous with surrealist architecture, but more and more projects today put people at the center. Among the projects participating in the Future City Award, there are not only "future spaces" that integrate rural and urban life, but also new cultural spaces that integrate art curation, fashion elements and sports to build a social scene for young people. In particular, real estate companies in the process of transformation and upgrading, such as Vanke, Jinmao, Shoukai, and BII Development, have also submitted innovative projects for space evolution units to adapt to the changes in people's consumption and service needs for space.
Li Zheng believes that the Future City Award is not only a commendation, but also a shared development platform for urban planners, builders, operators, and participants to seek common ground while reserving differences, learn from each other, and make progress together, showing the value that 36Kr City Lab has been committed to realizing: let some people see the future of the city first. It is hoped that the Future City Award can go hand in hand with the pioneers of urban development trends, and each solicitation and selection will demonstrate the value of trends that are beneficial to future urban development.
The Future City Award and UN-Habitat's "Resilient Cities" initiative
As the initiator of the Future City Award, the 36Kr Future City Lab team created the concept of the award, which originated from the "Resilient Cities" proposed by UN-Habitat. In the 2022 World Cities Report released by UN-Habitat, it was pointed out for the first time that the core task of future cities must be resilience building.
The report argues that cities need to prepare for a volatile and unpredictable future. This is a warning from the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, high inflation, climate change, and armed conflict, among others, that an urbanizing world must be well prepared to respond effectively to wide-ranging shocks.
The Report stresses that the success of cities, cities and towns depends to a large extent on policies that protect and support all people — leaving no one behind. Cities need green investments for sustainable consumption and production patterns, responsive and inclusive urban planning, prioritizing public health, and providing innovation and technology for all.
Based on the concept of "resilient cities" proposed by UN-Habitat, the judges of the Future City Award unanimously agreed that the award should be based on "smart, sustainable, friendly and local" as the four basic evaluation quadrants, and set up three award units: solution unit, spatial evolution unit and special unit, with seven sub-awards, which not only reflect the establishment and breakthrough of physical space transformation in urban development, but also demonstrate the iteration and innovation of advanced technology in urban application.
In the process of solicitation and evaluation, the core sponsors and annual judges also found that the practical experience and innovative value provided by some of these projects are in line with the elements of building a "resilient city". For example, the Smart City Application Award is committed to providing innovation and technology to all, the Sustainable Innovation Award is for green investment in cities, and the Future Settlements Award and Scene Creation Award are integrated with responsive and inclusive urban planning concepts.
Li Hao, one of the core initiators of the award and general manager of Beijing Science and Technology Company of the Chinese Academy of Planning and Planning
Li Hao, one of the core initiators of the Future City Award and general manager of Beijing Science and Technology Co., Ltd. of the Chinese Academy of Planning and Planning, said that the award aims to find and discover outstanding projects and models in the fields of urban planning, construction, operation and governance, and promote social attention and stimulate public participation.
Herzog, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a guest judge of the award, also emphasized that even the smallest cities can set an example in specific fields and provide us with lessons worth learning from. This also has a positive impact on the sustainable development of large cities.
Future City Award Vision & Planning
In October 2023, the "Urban Standardization Action Plan" jointly issued by the National Standards Committee, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development stated that it would accelerate the construction of a standard system to promote high-quality urban development, provide strong support for the scientific, refined, and intelligent governance of cities, help improve the level of urban resilience and sustainable development, and accelerate the modernization of urban governance systems and capabilities.
In this context, the Future City Award will cooperate with the "Casting Foundation Plan" of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the smart city team of the Chinese Academy of Planning and Planning (Beijing) Planning and Design Co., Ltd., the 36Kr Future City Summit and other institutions and channels to promote high-quality projects to more cities and help the resilience and high-quality development of Chinese cities.
The smart city team of the Chinese Academy of Planning and Planning (Beijing) Co., Ltd. focuses on the research in the field of smart city and urban science, and the urban simulation system solution independently developed by the team focuses on supporting the government's smart decision-making, covering urban management, transportation, environment, energy, population, industry and other fields, and realizes the intelligence of the whole process of urban operation and management.
The "Casting Foundation Plan" is a special action to promote high-quality digital transformation launched by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, focusing on the pain points and difficult problems faced by enterprises in the digital transformation, using the in-depth understanding of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in the field of digital technology, and better guiding the digital construction of all walks of life by linking the supply side and the demand side of digital transformation, and serving the industry to promote digital upgrading more efficiently.
The award is not the end. On the basis of the selection and commendation of the Future City Award 2023, 36Kr City Lab will, on the one hand, organize high-quality projects to go to more cities, provide targeted cases, applications and samples around the diversified development themes of different cities and the development challenges of localization. Interviews and interactive exchanges will bring the achievements and experiences of the Future City Awards 2023 to fruition, and also plan for the Future City Awards 2024.