Vancouver named city, global and people’s choice champion –

The City of Vancouver was today named Global Earth Hour Capital 2013 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) at an awards ceremony in Malmo, Sweden, one of three prestigious awards given to the city.

The Global Earth Hour Capital award recognizes a city taking serious action to address climate change. As the Canadian winner of a WWF Green City Challenge Award, Vancouver was in contention for the Global Award with finalists from India, Italy, the United States, Sweden and Norway.

Voters from around the world also selected Vancouver as the People’s Choice winner out of the 17 cities who were national WWF Green City Challenge finalists.

“Being named the WWF’s Global Earth Hour Capital is an exceptional honour for Vancouver and more international validation of our comprehensive efforts to be the world’s greenest city,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson.

“Even as national governments fail to act, it’s essential that cities continue to lead the way in confronting climate change, and Vancouver’s progress demonstrates that building a greener city also fosters a stronger local economy.”

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“…Our experts were unanimous in their view that the city’s open-data initiative – which aims to make the city’s vast trove of data publicly available online – is a true breakthrough.”
~BC Business Online

left: Mayor Gregor Robertson congratulates senior City staff in Council today for BC Business Innovators Award for their ongoing Open Data Project.

BC Business has awarded the City of Vancouver 2011′s B.C’s Most Innovative Organization, calling them “a hands-down favourite among this year’s panel of experts as one of the province’s leading innovators”
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The Open Data Initiative, proposed by Councillor Andrea Reimer and embraced by City staff, was launched in May 2009 and developed to ensure that citizens and businesses have access to the information that their tax dollars helped to create.

The catalogue now features over 125 data sets, including current business licenses in the city, food vendor locations, public art locations, and complete rapid transit routes – volumes of information applicable to creating everything from digital art installations, City Engineering geotracking or even the next big tourism app for enterprising social media companies.

This marks the first time a government organization has won this award that is most often associated with leading private sector companies.

To read about the city’s award, click here.