The vision of the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities is to gather comprehensive knowledge and information on the most innovative and inspiring sustainability projects from all over the world in a grand exposure of urban solutions and to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and technology from these initiatives. The programme has set out to create bonds and networks between cities, projects, individuals, non-governmental organizations, companies, and experts. The backbone of the Partnerships is a conviction that many creative solutions to common problems of cities already exist. However, we know much too little about them.

The first formal event of the Partnerships for Sustainable Cities took place in Stockholm in June of 2002, on a base laid of a great deal of hard work over more than a year from an international team and a program of world wide contact and collaboration that in many ways set the pattern for the approach subsequently taken in both the Kyoto World Cities 20/20 Challenge and in the present Briefs program.

With the help of the organizing group at the City of Stockholm, and an impressive international jury who got directly involved in both program definition and the world wide contact effort that followed, more than 220 outstanding international projects were identified and screened to identify their contributions, both in their immediate local environments and as 'good practice' examples for study and eventual adaptation in other parts of the world.

Fifty five project teams were invited to come to Stockholm for a three day series of events including cooperative workshops, a public exposition, and capped by an Awards Ceremony that took place in the evening of June 5th, on the 30th World Environment Day. The Stockholm Partnerships Awards Ceremony took place in the Blue Hall where the Nobel Prize Banquet takes place on the 10th of December every year. His Majesty the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, handed over 14 awards in what was described as a new and important ritual for sustainable development.

The Commons is committed to the continuation of the Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities as an international forum for collaboration and exchange for those working on the challenges of sustainable cities world wide, and in 2004 nominated it for the World Technology Environment Award in the team category, where it was selected as one of the five finalists. Our efforts and contacts with the City of Stockholm continue to this day, and our informal goal is to obtain support for a similar event in Stockholm in June 2008.