Peer learning between cities on Urban Innovation

Innovation in Local and Regional Government goes far beyond technology. United Cities and Local Governments(UCLG) confirms this through the extensive work carried out bye the City of Guangzhou and the Guangzhou Award.

The Guangzhou Award is co-sponsored by Guangzhou, UCLG and Metropolis. In 5 cycles spanning the pas decade, the Award has a global reach with over 1000 documented and peer-reviewed urban innovations to date. The purpose of the Award, besides recognizing excellence, is to accelerate the local implementation of the Global Agendas by providing value-added content for the exchange of knowledge, expertise and lessons from experience.

At the same time UCLG has been building a Learning Agenda focusing on learning from practices, in particular through peer learning methodologies. UCLG Learning highlights the advantages of a bottom-up approach to the implementation of the global agenda.

Over the past years, both of these approaches have changed the way we approach practices. The Guangzhou Award is not only looking at solutions but at understanding both the process and the local context that contribute to innovative solutions. UCLG has developed, in parallel, a set of tools to facilitate peer learning and exchanges so that other cities can benefit from this knowledge. Metropolis in collaboration with the City of Berlin, has developed an online platform that packages selected practices and lessons learned in a readily accessible and easy-to-use form. Finally, all three organizations are working closely with a global network of research institutes to continuously update and improve our understanding and knowledge of urban innovation and provide evidence for change.

The Peer Learning Networking Event will showcase real-life examples of innovative practices, knowledge sharing platforms and peer-learning tools and methodologies, and highlight the different angles of nature-based solutions. It also highlights the lessons learned in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas and what is required to go to scale. The session involves participants in Q&A and interactive games to simulate a peer-learning exercise.