The city of Laayoune, the largest metropolis in the Moroccan Sahara, snatched second place in the Sustainable and Resilient City Award category at the 14th edition of the Arab Towns (ATO) Organization Awards.
During a press conference, the judging committee of the 14th edition of the awards announced that out of the eleven cities competing for the Sustainable and Resilient City Award, first place went to the municipality of Greater Amman in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, second place was awarded to the city of Laayoune, while third place went to the Governorate of Dhofar, in the Sultanate of Oman.
As for the Excellence Award in Electronic and Intelligent Transformation, the first place went to the Municipality of Doha in Qatar, the second place to the Municipality of Greater Amman in Jordan, while the third place went to the Public Housing and Urban Development Corporation in the City of Amman.
As for the Creative City Award, first place was not awarded, while second place went to the General Corporation for Housing and Urban Development in the city of Amman, and third place was shared by the municipalities of Ramallah in Palestine and Gabès in Tunisia.
On this occasion, the Secretary General of the Arab Towns Organisation (ATO), Abdulrahman Hesham al-Asfour, praised the immense support that Qatar provides to the organization and its institutions, commending Qatar’s efforts to ensure the success of the activities of the Arab Towns Organisation (ATO).
Al-Asfour also stated that the Organization has made remarkable achievements within the framework of the Joint Arab Action initiatives, instituting a series of awards regularly given to Arab innovators in various fields such as architecture, the environment, sustainable cities, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence (AI).
For his part, the Director-General of the ATO’s Awards, Issa Rashid Hamad, stressed that the Organization is committed to providing all the necessary means to encourage the participation of all Arab cities in the different award categories.
The Arab Towns Organization (ATO), which currently includes over 650 towns, was established in 1967 to support and consolidate joint Arab action.