In just more than a week’s time, the World Design Capital for 2014 will be chosen in Taipei. Cape Town is one of three short-listed cities; Bilbao (Spain) and Dublin (Ireland) are the others.

It has taken much work to get to this point, including the compiling of a sophisticated bid demonstrating the best we have to offer and the assessments of our design solutions by judges.

We are proud of what we have achieved so far, whatever the outcome.

I will be travelling to Taipei for the result, representing probably the first African city to reach this stage of the process.

Our preparations are well under way but in readying ourselves for the announcement, we should not lose sight of what this bid represents.

On the face of it, it is a tremendous opportunity for Cape Town to demonstrate how we are using innovation to address the challenges of our past and the inevitable challenges of our future.

But there is something deeper that this process represents.

For the first time, those who would celebrate excellence in design and foster it, turn to a city from the developing world.

This has historic significance, to be sure. But more importantly, it has an unmistakable significance for the future.

It has become common wisdom to see growth and expansion in the developing world. Where traditionally rich markets seem to have reached peaks of capacity, the potential of the developing world and new economies grows every day.

Patterns of trade and investment have shifted dramatically over the past decade. Where the developed world engaged at its leisure with other markets, it now ignores them at its peril. There is an engine powering growth, development and expansion in the 21st century. And its fuel is the developing world’s energy, the fuel that is taking us into the future.

This has brought incredible new shifts in thinking and understanding. While there has always been a level of global interconnection, there have only really been pockets of experience that seemed to have application only in certain regions.

As regions have bounded out of their traditional spaces and new markets have opened up, the vistas of global development have expanded. Those new markets feed each other and, in complex ways, strengthen each other and grow into something greater, simultaneously.

Though they remain driven by regions, they contribute to a global force of growth and change led by the developing world as a whole.

It is an undeniable wave that is transforming us all.

Essentially, that growth means two things: it means that there is a new range of developmental experience being created to replace the old model. But critically, it also means that that experience has to foster certain standards, a range of practices that help us all forge the path ahead so that we do not become lost in the experience of the new.

And therein lies the real significance of our bid.

It is the lived expression of what a city of the developing world is doing to manage development for the future.

Like many developing cities, Cape Town has the challenges of a divided past and spatial separation.

It has challenges of poverty and urbanisation, of unemployment and providing services to everyone, and many more.

But we also have solutions.

We are using design to address our challenges and explore creative ways to confront them head-on and adapt to them.

Our design approaches include plans for infrastructure development. They include plans to facilitate private sector growth.

They include new ways of building houses. New ways of providing clean water. New ways of supporting businesses and first-time job seekers. New ways of moving people around. And new ways for strategising for the future.

These are all aspects of design in thought and in practice, coming together from across society as the meeting of creative energies that, when combined, help us adapt for the future, and change it.

As the globe comes to understand the developing world, and places in the developing world understand each other, we will all need to explore all solutions to common problems.

Designing for urban life in the 21st century becomes a paramount experience that moves Cape Town forward and adds to the knowledge of how these new regional drivers of the globe adapt to meet similar challenges.

We are preparing for Taipei.

We are preparing as a city committed to changing the way we live.

But as a representative of the developing world, we are preparing as a city whose approaches will help take us all forward.

We often think of design as something of visual beauty, comfort or speed. In compiling Cape Town’s bid, we have seen remarkable evidence of design across so many more aspects of life – sustainable food production, cutting-edge engineering applications and solutions, innovative construction techniques, animation, models for mobility.

Cape Town is proud to have the thinkers and doers who apply design to improve people’s lives, create dignified and pleasing public spaces and to live more sustainably.

The applications can be as hi-tech as clean, high-performance Formula One powerboat engines or as simple and beautiful as a wind chime made from recycled material.

Cape Town is such a place.

It inspires.

If we learn from our experiences and from experts, if we think creatively about solutions and if design becomes a way of life, we can make a great city even greater.

Design, innovation and creativity can help us build on the five-pillar strategy for this city government’s five-year term of office.

Just think about how you can improve safety for our residents in the way you design public spaces, buildings and services with lighting, access. Consider the opportunities should people produce their own energy and food in a sustainable way or create products from waste destined for landfill sites.

The benefits and beauty of good design make even drab surroundings more liveable and give people a sense of pride and belonging – the makings of an inclusive city. A well-run city will think and plan smartly around public transport, growth areas, community and care facilities.When a city, its government, its people, its businesses, industries and its communities live and work in a way enhanced by design, we will become more of a caring city.

The slogan of Cape Town’s bid says it all – Live Design, Transform Lives. It is a reminder, an affirmation and a constant challenge. Cape Town is up for it. We have already achieved international recognition as a design city. The formal accolade will encourage us to continue.

l Patricia de Lille is the Executive Mayor of Cape Town