A director of Bath-headquartered international landscape architecture practice Grant Associates been selected to sit on the technical panel for a major new award scheme championing the world’s greenest cities.
Peter Chmiel, pictured, is among 23 multi-disciplinary experts from across the globe to be chosen to assess and score the entries received for the inaugural AIPH World Green City Awards.
The panel will select shortlists for the six award categories and put forward recommendations on which should also be considered for the overall AIPH World Green City award.
Cities across the world were invited to showcase their strategic greening and urban nature initiatives.
The awards aim to recognise those that pursue a meaningful impact, are being successfully implemented, have potential to further scale or spread to other cities and exemplify resilience in how they are conducted.
The technical panel will deliver their shortlist to the awards jury, which will then select one winner per category as well as the overall AIPH World Green City winner.
Peter has worked on a number of internationally recognised urban projects at Grant Associates.
He jointly won the Gold Award at last year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show with Grant Associates senior associate Chin Chen for the pair’s Chinese-inspired Guangzhou Garden, which explored the future possibilities for landscape cities.
He said he was looking forward to the opportunity of reviewing and assessing the greening and urban nature initiatives of cities globally.
“I feel honoured, privileged and thrilled to have the opportunity to review a number of entries for such an important global award,” he said.
“This inaugural award covers categories based on economic, environmental and social initiatives and, when such initiatives are considered holistically, it highlights a global appetite to recast many increasingly populated cities as ‘landscape cities’.
“I anticipate many of the submitted initiatives will contain very interesting data that will facilitate knowledge-sharing, aid future evidence-based decision making and also support a global green city movement as a whole.’’
AIPH secretary general Tim Briercliffe added: “AIPH is very proud to see the technical panel come to life for the very first edition of the World Green City Awards.
“We warmly welcome each member of the panel as we anticipate the announcement of the shortlist.
“We sincerely thank the panel members for their dedication to this exciting process. Together we look forward to showcasing the inspiring greening initiatives from leading cities around the world who are all taking action for plants, nature and people.”
The award categories are Living Green for Biodiversity, Living Green for Climate Change, Living Green for Health and Wellbeing, Living Green for Water, Living Green for Social Cohesion and Living Green for Economic Recovery and Inclusive Growth.
Grant Associates also has an office in Singapore, where it helped create the city-state’s spectacular Gardens by the Bay.
