Six other cities including Beirut in Lebanon, Havana (Cuba), La Paz (Bolivia), Vigan (Phillipines), Durban (South Africa) and Doha (Qatar) also made it to the list as announced by founder-president of New7Wonders, Bernard Weber in Dubai on Monday.
The New7Wonders campaign was established in 2000 an initiative dubbed as the Millennium project to choose Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments.
The first popularity poll votes was led by Canadian-Swiss Bernard Weber and organised by the Zurich-based New7Wonders Foundation in Switzerland. The list of winners announced on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon.
Founder-President of New7Wonders, Bernard Weber, announcing the election of Beirut, Doha, Durban, Havana, Kuala Lumpur, La Paz and Vigan as the New7Wonders Cities.
New7Wonders Cities is the third global poll where winners were selected from postal, social media and telephone which attracted a staggering 100 million votes.
This time around, the campaign revolves around the great future challenges of these cities and zooms in on how people shape the way they live.
“New7Wonders Cities is a forum for discussing everything from urban planning to metropolitan governance, from tourism to architecture,” said Weber.
New7Wonders Cities panel of experts include former United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) Head Professor Federico Mayor and global-award winning architect Zaha Hadid, who advised on the selection of the 28 official finalist candidates in October last year.
This campaign follows the successful New7Wonders of the World and New7Wonders of Nature campaigns.
