Vote here
The world’s top 25 most innovative cities have been unveiled by the Urban Land Institute in partnership with Wall Street Journal, and the Citi Group. An initial selection of 200 cities were determined by the Urban Land Institute and were announced in June 2012 and in the July/August issue of the Wall Street Journal Magazine. After this 25 Cities were shortlisted based on a voting share of 75% Urban Land Institute and 25% Public Voting.
The current phase of voting will see the public and the Urban Land Institute both having 50% of the voting power, with the process being promoted across both traditional and new media, allowing voters to vote multiple times, but only once per day. Three cities with the highest number of votes will be announced on Thursday, October 25, 2012, and in the November 2012 issue of WSJ Magazine.
Some interesting facts about Cape Town:
- Rated #1 in the Siemens Green City Index for land use, Cape Town has 1,500 people per square km while the Index average is 4,600.
- The city is a base for many IT and manufacturing companies.
- Announced a goal of becoming the African city with the cleanest air.
- One initiative: installing 300,000 solar water heaters by 2015.
- Cape Town is expected, along with National Treasury to invest over R10 billion over the next 5 years in developing a new bus rapid transit (BRT) network.
- Green spaces: 290 m² per person. The Siemens Green Cities index for Africa has an average of 74.
- Cape Town runs environmental awareness training sessions that teach 23,000 city staff members how to implement sustainability advice, based on the Smart Living Handbook.
By Patrick Phillips, CEO of the Urban Land Institute
There are innumerable “best of” lists for cities — but at their essence, what distinguishes the highest ranked cities is always related to sustainability and livability.
Sustainability, of course, is a bit of a loaded term that means very different things to different people. But in rapidly growing metropolitan areas in the United States and across the world, the great opportunity to build cities, neighborhoods and buildings that use less energy and have a smaller overall footprint in terms of resource consumption, including land, can’t be denied.