Global Resources Allocation Centre
Status
ongoingCity
Guangzhou
Main actors
City Government, other
Project area
Metropolitan Area
Duration
Ongoing since 2018
The Development of Guangzhou as a global sustainable city.
In the era of globalization, resources flow around the world with unprecedented speed and quantity. These flows interconnect cities and increase inter-dependency in their development. The capacity of a city to allocate resources globally can determine its position in the world economy and additionally impact its potential to achieve sustainable development.
A Global Resources Allocation Center (GRAC) is a global or regional center that plays an important role in integrating, innovating, improving, determining, controlling, and activating the way of use, distribution and direction of the flow of resources globally. By established a GRAC, the city provides a platform, while transnational corporations and international organizations are the main actors. The GRAC innovatively uses and integrates the flow of resources and distribute them with vast infrastructure networks and service networks of the city.
This project has been chosen by the city of Guangzhou to be peer-reviewed in the frame of the Sustainable Cities Collaboratory: https://use.metropolis.org/news/sustainable-cities-collaboratory
Guangzhou has long-been a major national center in China and is also rapidly emerging in the global city system. In the past four decades, Guangzhou has accumulated a large number of resources and attracted a large number of foreign investments and international trade contracts. However, the city is seeking a broader and more active role. Guangzhou has well-established infrastructure and service networks, an emerging industry-driven economy, and other favorable external circumstances, that provide the required elements to develop a GRAC, which is crucial for the sustainable development of the city.
A conceptual model for GRAC will be developed for further analysis. Major cities including New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, have been selected as case studies and research will be undertaken to analyze their experiences in GRAC development.
An evaluation framework has been developed. The framework identifies six areas:
- allocation platform
- allocation actors
- allocation path or network
- innovation capability.
- Business Environment
- Resources
Using this framework, the capability of global resource allocation for Guangzhou and the selected cities will be analyzed and compared combined with previous empirical and quantitative analysis, targets and pathways will be prioritized for developing the GRAC.
The lead agency for the project is the City of Guangzhou.