Digital-Friendly City: The New Frontier of Global Digital Governance

Digital-Friendly Cities: The New Frontier of Global Digital Governance

On July 2, in Beijing, at the main forum of the Global Digital Economy Conference, Xu Haoliang, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), delivered the opening remarks. He did not use words like "disruption" or "revolution," but instead repeatedly emphasized governance capacity, trust, and inclusiveness—which provide the key clues for understanding the concept of digital-friendly cities. On the same day, UNDP released the Global Guidelines for Digital-Friendly City Assessment and announced the launch of the preparation of the Global Report on Digital-Friendly City Development. The next day, the UNDP China Innovation Lab was inaugurated in Beijing's Daxing District, becoming the operational anchor for this agenda.

Why Have Cities Become the Focus of Digital Governance?

From data regulation in Brussels to artificial intelligence ethics negotiations in Geneva, discussions on global digital governance were once concentrated at the top-level design. But digital transformation in the real world ultimately has to land on streets, communities, and municipal services. Cities are the most densely populated spaces for production and living worldwide, and also the most fully utilized testing grounds for digital technology applications. Traffic dispatch, government services, medical appointments, energy management—every digital transformation is redefining the relationship between citizens and the city. However, technology deployment does not automatically bring fairness and trust. The digital divide may widen due to tool upgrades, privacy risks may intensify due to data aggregation, and public services may become fragile due to algorithm failures.

This is precisely the significance of the "digital-friendly city" proposition. It does not require cities to chase the most cutting-edge technologies, but rather requires that when technology is deployed, it can expand accessibility, enhance trust, and promote sustainable development. In other words, the core of a digital-friendly city is not technological metrics, but governance logic.

A Toolkit from Assessment to Action

The Global Guidelines for Digital-Friendly City Assessment released this time was jointly developed by the UNDP China Office and Chinese partners. Its positioning is a practical framework, not a competitive ranking. The guidelines echo the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Global Digital Compact, providing cities at different development levels with a common language to examine their own digital progress. Cities can use it to identify priorities, set improvement goals, and track change trends.

The Innovation Lab, which accompanies the guidelines, assumes a more operational function. Located in Beijing's Daxing District, the lab is jointly built by UNDP, the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, and the Daxing District Government. It focuses on applied research, policy innovation, city-level demonstration pilots, and international knowledge exchange. If the assessment guidelines are compared to a CT scan, the lab is the operating table—it is used to test solutions in real urban environments and then spread them through knowledge networks to broader regions.

This "assessment-piloting-scaling" chain makes up for the defect in which past international initiatives tended to hang in the air. Many digital governance frameworks remain at the proposal stage, and very few truly enter the operational level of cities. UNDP's deliberate choice to place the lab in Beijing this time is also based on the scale and speed of Chinese cities' digital infrastructure construction, as well as the typicality of Daxing District as a sample of rapid urban transformation.## The Intersection of Chinese Cities and the Global Agenda

China has long been in the spotlight in the field of digital governance. National-level policies concerning big data, artificial intelligence, and data elements have been issued frequently, while at the city level, various practices such as "city brains" and "one-stop online government services" have emerged. These explorations bring both controversy and results, but they share common characteristics: high density, rapid iteration, and large scale. For many emerging market countries, this path may be closer to their own urban realities than the modular solutions of developed countries in Europe and the United States.

This cooperation between UNDP and China has actually built a bridge. The guidelines provide an internationally shared language, the laboratory absorbs the operational experience of Chinese cities, and then outputs it to cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America through UNDP's global network. Beijing's Daxing District is therefore no longer just a geographical coordinate, but could become a node in the global digital-friendly city movement.

Of course, this process is just beginning. Whether the guideline's indicator system is sensitive enough, whether the laboratory can balance the interests of multiple parties, and whether the goal of digital inclusion will be compromised in actual implementation are all unresolved challenges. But what is commendable is that global digital governance is undergoing a "downward movement" — moving down from ministerial meeting rooms to city halls, from declarations of principles to project implementation.

Digital-Friendly Cities: A Long-Form Governance Experiment

The essence of a digital-friendly city is to use governance certainty to hedge against technological uncertainty. The three major outputs presented by UNDP at this conference — the assessment guidelines, the development report, and the innovation laboratory — constitute a relatively complete action path. It no longer relies solely on the top-down advancement of global agreements, nor does it completely pin hopes on bottom-up market iteration; instead, it attempts to establish an institutionalized runway at the intermediate scale of the city.

For cities around the world, this is an experiment worth joining. Digital transformation is costly and far-reaching, and no city wants to build its future on blind technology investment. The assessment guidelines provide diagnostic tools, the laboratory provides space for trial and error, and cross-city knowledge sharing may help the entire international community avoid detours. Whether this approach, starting from Beijing, can become the infrastructure for the next phase of global digital governance depends on whether it can truly establish itself in concrete urban practice.