SG at Urban Innovation

Urban Innovation Forum, Exchanging Ideas Welcoming Guangzhou Award

GUANGZHOU Library has once again witnessed enthusiastic people meeting to learn to each other, exchanged ideas and inspiration in effort to create innovations for the city. It was on April 17, 2016 that Urban Innovation Forum was held for the third time in Guangzhou, a series of event held in welcoming a global award to recognize cities’ innovations.

In this 3rd Urban Innovation Forum, Guangzhou invited UCLG ASPAC Secretary General, Dr. Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, to become keynote speaker in this forum. The Secretary General made a speech on Building

International Cooperation in Development: How Innovation Shapes Our Urban Future for citizen of Guangzhou.

In her speech, she introduced many challenges of urbanization faced by Asian countries, particularly natural disasters and diseases. She explained that expanding international cooperation could improve sustainable innovative capability and encouraged to continuously update people’s mindset and that cooperation could push forward realization of urban development.

Audiences were also very interested in this session, reflected by various topics asked during Question and Answer session. An audience interested in solving traffic congestion asked the Secretary General’s opinion, including how to control number of cars on the road. According to Bernadia, encouraging people to choose public transportation was the best solution while at the same time promoting its convenience, comfort and environmentally friendly characteristics. Other asked solution to solve sewage treatment. For this, Bernadia suggested having a special department for sewage treatment and calling for public awareness.

Urban Innovation Forum was held in conjunction to Guangzhou Award event, a global award rewarded to cities implementing innovations. This forum was firstly started on January 17, while the second forum was conducted on March 26, both events were formulated under “one city, one story” concept.