Comment

The Educating Cities’ Award was created with the aim of recognising and giving international visibility to the work being carried out by the Educating Cities to improve the quality of life of their cities.

The second edition revolves around the theme “Civic Education through Participation”.

We live days in which citizens claim for a more direct involvement in the decisions that affect them. Citizens ask to be heard and that their voices are taken into account. At the same time, urban problems become more and more complex and collective intelligence and involvement are needed to solve them. For all the above, it becomes necessary to open local government decision-making processes to the citizenship and to move to a more deliberative model of democracy. Moreover, citizen participation contributes to renew civic engagement and co-responsibility and fosters the feeling of belonging.

The promotion of an active, critical and co-responsible citizenship is a key objective of the Educating Cities. That is why supporting skills for active participation; education in values and capacity building to promote grassroots movements becomes crucial in building better cities (articles 9 and 18 of the Charter of Educating Cities).

In this second edition,62 candidacies from 49 member cities, from 12 countries and 3 continents were submitted. An international jury integrated by academics, representatives of the IAEC Executive Committee and United Cities and Local Governments analysed the proposals.

The decision was not easy given the significance and the relevance of the candidate projects. Finally, the jury selected the following projects as the winners of this Second Edition of the Award for their clear social impact:

• Gunsan (Republic of Korea: “Gunsan City’s Old Downtown Regeneration Project”
• León, Guanajuato (Mexico): “Women Networks without Violence”
• Setúbal (Portugal): “Our Neighbourhood, our City”

Good practices that highlight the importance of urban regeneration through participation and capacity building; women’s empowerment in the promotion of equality and social transformation and bettering the living conditions of vulnerable neighbourhoods through participation.

Compliments of all the members of the Jury to all those involved in the Gunsan City’s Old Downtown Regeneration Project.

We sincerely congratulate to Gunsan, León and Setúbal, along with our thanks to all the cities that participated!