This year's World Resources Institute Ross Cities Prize for Cities is honoring five cities around the world for "trailblazing projects of urban transformation," the Guardian reports.
The prize, which bestows a $250,000 grand prize and $25,000 each for four other finalists, is aimed at helping cities prepare for climate change.
The five finalists are Fortaleza, Brazil; New York City; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Oslo, Norway; and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, India.
"Instead, our cities are obsessed with concrete, building roads, and constructing buildings at the expense of trees, wetlands, and water bodies," writes Andrew Revkin in the Guardian.
"Most importantly, all these efforts help to catalyse and expand climate resilience efforts."
In Fortaleza, for example, a program called Re-Ciclo now provides guaranteed income to waste-pickers, along with dignity of work, enabling door-to-door collection of waste through apps and e-tricycles.
In New York City, the Green Community Schoolyards initiative has removed the asphalt in hundreds of poor, inner city schoolyards.
In Buenos Aires, the Rodrigo Bueno climate-resilient housing project is an innovative program of integration that integrates a large informal settlement into the city, providing
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