Southwest China's Nanning is one of seven cities worldwide to win the 2007 United Nations (UN) Habitat Scroll of Honor Award for the municipal government's work in the field of human settlements development.

"The Nanning municipal people's government has been awarded for developing China's first Integrated City Emergency Response System. This system streamlines under one roof all the city's police and fire emergencies, paramedic ambulance responses and traffic accident reporting systems, along with 30 other non-emergency public services that were previously managed by a variety of different administrative departments," said a UN-HABITAT statement.

The city's integrated emergency response system has tapped the potential of the public resources to the full and made the city safer since its establishment in May 2002," said Nanning's vice-mayor Qian Xueming.

Nanning, capital city of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has an urban population of about 2.45 million and has been listed among China's most livable cities.

Other winners of this year's awards include individuals and institutions from Russia, Cuba, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Palestine and Tanzania. The Habitat Scroll of Honor is awarded each year on World Habitat Day, established by the UN General Assembly in 1989 to raise awareness regarding the state of human settlements. The holiday falls this year on October 1 in the Hague, the Netherlands, and on October 5 in Monterrey, Mexico.

China has won 15 UN-HABITAT awards. Yangzhou, a city in east China's Jiangsu Province, won the award last year for its work in preserving the old city and improving the residential environment.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2007)