Nanjing, capital city of east China’s Jiangsu province, was awarded the title of National Civilized City in 2020, the highest honor in the comprehensive appraisal for Chinese cities, as well as the most valuable city brand, Nanjing Daily reported.

A road sign at a crossing in Nanjing. (Photo/Duan Renhu)

Over the past years, the city has been endeavoring to improve the environment and upgrade facilities of local communities, farmers markets, back streets and lanes, and maintain transportation order.

Nanjing started to strengthen the management of electric bikes in 2019, in a bid to prevent them from disturbing traffic order. A camera system was also introduced to take pictures of pedestrians who ignore red lights at crossings. Thanks to these efforts, traffic violations have been effectively reduced.

The city has also renovated old residential communities in major districts, improving the waterproof system, installing security doors, painting walls and repairing the lights in the passageways of buildings.

During the past three years, Nanjing has renovated and upgraded 1,400 back streets and small lanes, and 300 farmers markets, giving a new look to those places.

The city has adopted new technologies in urban governance. It launched a mini-program called “Ningducha” to record and summarize data related to the city’s bid for the National Civilized City campaign.

For half a year, a total of 83,939 pieces of data and 10,534 photos reflecting problems have been collected and 164 reports were produced by the app, offering statistical support for the city to efficiently spot and deal with problems in urban governance.

In Nanjing, there are over 3 million volunteers providing all kinds of services for residents at road intersections, medical institutions, bus stations, shopping malls, supermarkets, and tourist attractions.