The Dubai International Award for Best Practices

With the generous support of the Municipality of Dubai, U.A.E., the BLP is able to raise awareness of some of the most pressing social, economic and environmental challenges of an urbanizing world. The Award also calls attention to the potential solutions to these same challenges. Every two years, 10 Best Practices are recognized and awarded with a US$ 30,000 prize, a trophy and a commemorative certificate. The next Dubai International Award will be presented in the year 2006.

Sharing Lessons Learned from Best Practices

The Dubai International Award plays a crucial incentive role in the identification of Best Practices from around the world. From the 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004 Awards, over 2,150 Good and Best Practices from 140 countries have been compiled on the Habitat Best Practices database. The 2004 edition of this database, including the 2004 Dubai International Award recipients, is currently available on the Internet at: http://www.bestpractices.org

Through its global network of partners, Best Practices are analyzed with a view to extracting lessons that others can learn from and incorporate into their own work. From this material, the BLP and its partners produce casebooks, engage in the transfer of practical knowledge, experience and expertise, and develop tools to facilitate learning and capacity building. These tools are in continuous development and are available on the Internet at: http://www.bestpractices.org/blpnet/BLP/learning/learning.htm

The process of identifying Good and Best Practices also serves as a barometer of emerging urban trends and conditions and a means of identifying who is doing what to implement commitments made under Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda and the Millennium Declaration. Every two years, UN-Habitat compiles an analysis of current trends and conditions in the State of the World’s Cities report series and distributes the results to key decision-makers and civic leaders at all levels.

Good Policies and Enabling Legislation

The Commission on Human Settlements, at its 17th and 18th sessions decided that the documentation of best practices should be expanded to include examples of good policies and enabling legislation. The objective of this initiative is to document tried and tested urban policies and legislation that have involved key stakeholders in decision-making processes; The outcome would be a better understanding of how policies and enabling legislation can result in the implementation of good practices and in reverse, how lessons learned from good practices could be integrated into policy formulation and development.