Monday, October 19, 2009

Dubai wins international Livable Communities award


Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality said the Municipality's winning of the second place in the International Awards for Livable Communities in the group of cities that has more than 750,000 people is further evidence of the extent of the Municipality's efficiency and excellence in this vital area.

He added that this has become the main requirement of excellence for any organization that aspires to be a key player in the progress of the Emirate of Dubai, under the wise leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
He noted that the award is one of the oldest and biggest specialized awards added to the achievements of the Municipality for the year 2009 as it is the world's only competition for local communities, focusing on environmental management and the creation of active vibrant communities.
The award included more than 60 projects and cities of the 67 who sent nominations in late July 2009 to the organizing authority of the award from 13 countries all competing for winning the title in 2009. Dubai Municipality won the award this year after fierce competition with many of the cities and authorities from the European and Middle Eastern countries. The competitors also included China with the participation of five cities including Beijing, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Australia and Austria.
It is worth mentioning that the cities winning the award were selected based on the role and participation of society and citizens in the process of planning, environment and sustainable development.
Lootah pointed out that the purpose of these awards is to encourage an approach for best practices, innovation and leadership in providing communities vibrancy and environmental sustainability to improve the quality of life. Participation in the Livcom Awards leads to highlighting the name of the community internationally and getting opportunity to learn from the communities located across the world for the best rules of international practices in environmental management, landscape management, heritage management and to strengthen communities and proactive planning.

Lootah said that this award is the result of an earnest effort by the Municipality employees to identify the best practices in all areas of work, making them a basis for future planning, contributing towards the nation's prestige and placing it in the ranks of advanced countries, a status it deserves.

"We are honoured to win this prestigious award, the result of the approach followed by the Dubai government and its departments guided by the vision of our wise leadership, which urges us to achieve excellence locally and internationally," he said.
He pointed out that the Livcom Awards cover five sectors of the population and communities are not compared with each other within the categories of the population, but are judged in terms of the manner of performance and arbitration standards within the cultural, political, economic, and geographical environs and the climatic conditions in which they live.
He reiterated that participation in this award was through the efforts of a special team formed for this award, which travelled to the Czech city of Prague to give a practical and professional presentation on the project with a detailed explanation of the efforts of Dubai Municipality on best practices, explaining how the project was linked to all of the criteria for arbitration such as improving the landscaping engineering, heritage and environmentally sensitive practices, and sustainability within the community as well as highlighting the important role of community participation. At the end of the presentation the jury asked some questions and based on its evaluation the jury selected the list of cities qualified to race in the category of cities with more than 750,000 people at the end of July.
As for the award's exhibition, Dubai's exhibits evoked tremendous response from attendees and visitors, who were distributed with all publications and promotional materials on Dubai.
He added that the Municipality mainly depends on its employees qualified in the preparation of corporate strategic plan, its structure, and methods of implementation according to the best practices, operational and scientific.

"Winning of this award was the culmination of all the efforts made by the cadres in all organizational units and was the result of the joint cooperation for the success of the Municipality's plan at the corporate level as well as strategic and operational plans at the level of all organizational units.

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