Canadians should be extremely pleased to know that two cities made it to the ICF 2013 Top 7 “Intelligent Communities” in the world. The Intelligent Community Forum has just named the top seven communities for the year including Oulu, Finland; Columbus, USA; Stratford, Canada; Taoyuan County, Taiwan; Tallinn, Estonia; Taichung City, Taiwan and Toronto, Canada. These cities were able to make it to the top seven index because they have shown the world how to use technology to obtain “several advantages,” for instance new jobs, says ICF. As the co-founder of ICF, Lou Zacharilla said last week that “The top seven communities of 2013 have made innovation based on information and communications technology the cornerstone of their economies and fostered economic growth through high-quality employment, while increasing the quality of life of their citizens.”
Talking about Toronto, the ICF stated:
“Waterfront Toronto, North America’s largest urban renewal project, is transforming a vast brownfield zone at the edge of Lake Ontario into a new city center with 40,000 residential units, one million square meters of commercial space and 300 hectares of parks. A new center for knowledge industries in North America’s third-largest knowledge economy, it will be served by a 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premise network and integrate green technologies and practices into every aspect of its design and operations. From Internet access and training in public libraries to a kids@computers program that funds technology for low-income families, Toronto is working to extend the benefits of its success to every part of society. In the process, it is preparing citizens and businesses to compete and win in a global market.”
ICF also talked about Stratford:
“The city-owned utility has built out a 70 km open access fiber network with a wifi overlay and signed sales agreements with commercial carriers to deliver triple-play and mobile services. The city has used the network to slash its own telecom costs and power a smart meter program. Adopting the triple-helix approach to innovation, it has turned Stratford into a test bed for technology pilots for such companies as Toshiba, Research in Motion and Cisco as well as for institutions including Clemson University and the University of Waterloo. For an economy in transition, the business trends in Stratford offer validation that the city is on the right track.”
Besides this the Intelligent Community Forum also mentioned that there were two other cities in Canada apart from Toronto and Stratford, namely Winnipeg and Kingston that were also very close to make it to this top seven chart.
However, the most interesting thing about this top seven list is that only one city of US was able to make it to this line-up. On the other hand, Taiwan surprised everyone, as hardly anyone was expecting two of its cities will be listed in this “Intelligent Communities” index.
Source: TechVibes
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