This Friday, Buffalo will be competing against Paris, Helsinki, Berlin, London, Toronto, Mexico City, Calgary, Vancouver, Brussels, Beijing, and others in the The Guardian’s Cities Day Challenge. Three dozen cities worldwide have made the finals. Representatives from each city will be presenting one idea, pioneered by the city, that other cities should adopt. Reuse and repurposing of the historic Central Terminal, a community-driven process, is Buffalo’s entry.
The Challenge is presented in conjunction with UN-Habitat, and we’ll feature the winner in an in-depth piece at Guardian Cities. Projects such as a community initiative, a technical innovation, a groundbreaking building that just went up,or a new green space, are things that could be repeated in cities globally.
Starting at 8 AM GMT and running until 4 PM, each contestant will have 12 minutes in the hot seat to present their idea via a streaming live blog. The Central Terminal folks will provide an overview of the restoration project at 10:12 AM to a panel of judges:
• Ivan Harbour, one third of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, the award-winning architectural firm.
• Jennifer Keesmaat, the chief planner for the city of Toronto.
• Anna Minton, author of Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First-Century City, who is joined in the judging process by her MA students at the University of East London’s Production of Place degree.
• Dan Hill, director of futures at the UK’s Future Cities Catapult.
• Usman Haque , the London-based artist and architect who designs interactive architectural systems.
• Adam Greenfield, the author of Against the Smart City, a senior urban fellow at LSE Cities and runs New York-based design practice Urbanscale.
Readers worldwide will be able to follow from city to city, ask follow-up questions of the presenters, and debate which ideas they like best. The winner will be notified on or after October 31 and will not receive any physical prize, nor will they receive any prize which carries any monetary value.