On the night of November 12, the closing ceremony of the 5th Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation, the 2021 Global Mayors’ Forum and the 13th World Congress of the World Association of Metropolis were kicked off in Guangzhou Yuexiu International Congress Center. 

The winning cities claimed the honour of the Guangzhou Award were announced at the award ceremony, the International Design Education (IDE) Program jointly initiated by the United Nations Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries, World Eco-Design Conference and Zhejiang University, Ningbo will offer limited number of full scholarships to students of the cities won the medal of honour.

To advance global urban governance and innovative development, Guangzhou, the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and the World Association of Major Metropolises jointly created the Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation (“Guangzhou Award” for short) in 2012, which is held every two years. It has gone through a ten-year journey since then. Each cycle of the Guangzhou Award has attracted more than 150 cities from more than 50 countries to participate, and has so far collected more than 1,300 cases of urban governance innovation from all over the world, providing significant reference for cities around the world to enhance their urban governance capacity. 

The IDE Program is committed to promoting the integration and sustainable development of design, ecology and society in a global scale, and strengthening exchanges and cooperation on ecological design (Eco-Design) among countries and regions, enhancing the capability in design education for all countries, co-establishing an international design education cooperation base settled at the International School of Design of Zhejiang University, Ningbo, and co-establishing an international design education innovation and entrepreneurship base settled at Wanqu Open University of Design.

Zhang Shuofu, Secretary of the Communist Party of China Guangzhou Committee; Wen Guohu, Mayor of Guangzhou, Shi Qizhu, Director of the Standing Committee of Guangzhou Municipal People’s Congress, Li Yiwei, the Chairperson of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Cang Feng, the Deputy Director-General, Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission, Communist Party of China Guangdong Committee; other leading officials of Guangzhou, including Pan Jianguo, Wang Huanqing, Zhang Yajie, and the officials from foreign consulates generals in Guangzhou attended the offline award ceremony and closing ceremony.