The Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org) announced today its highly anticipated list of the Smart21 Communities of 2011. The announcement was made by ICF Co-founder Louis Zacharilla at an event hosted by Suwon, South Korea, ICF’s 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year.
A complete list of the Smart21 of 2011 with brief profiles of each community may be found on the Smart21 page under Awards.
The Smart21 announcement is the first stage of ICF's annual Intelligent Community Awards cycle. It is followed by the naming of the Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year, selected from among the 21. The Top Seven announcement will be made on January 19, 2011 at the annual Pacific Telecommunications Council conference (www.ptc.org) in Honolulu, Hawaii during an awards luncheon. The cycle concludes in New York City on June 3, 2011 during ICF’s annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit (www.icfsummit.com), where one of the Top Seven will succeed Suwon as Intelligent Community of the Year 2011.
Each year ICF defines a theme that guides the nominations for the Intelligent Community of the Year. The 2011 theme is "Health in the Intelligent Community." The Smart21 Communities of 2011 have shown moving and innovative approaches to the delivery of better care as well as an increase in productivity and elimination of unnecessary costs. These developments take on ever-increasing importance at a time when the Baby Boom generation is entering its elder years and costs are expected to rise as a result. At the same time, they are promoting the growth of highly competitive clusters of companies in traditional healthcare as well as emerging fields in which information and communications technology are used to improve quality, transparency and productivity in healthcare and life sciences.
The Smart21 of 2011
The 2011 honorees include communities from 12 nations in the Americas, Europe and Asia. They include 10 communities that have appeared among the Smart21 before and seven that appeared on last year’s list. A community from Hungary joins the Smart21 list for the first time. Canada has four communities in the 2011 Smart21 while the USA leads the overall count with six communities. The Smart21 of 2011 are:
- Birmingham, UK
- Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
- Chongqing, China
- Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
- Dakota County, Minnesota, USA
- Danville, Virginia, USA
- Dublin, Ohio, USA
- Eindhoven, Netherlands
- Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
- Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
- Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
- Northeast Ohio, USA
- Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
- Riverside, California, USA
- Shanghai, China
- Sopron, Hungary
- Stratford, Ontario, Canada
- Taoyuan County, Taiwan
- Trikala, Greece
- Windsor-Essex, Ontario, Canada
- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
"This year's Smart21 are using educational networks and universities - both physical and virtual ones - in more innovative ways,” said ICF Co-founder Louis Zacharilla during the announcement ceremony in South Korea. “Places like Sungkyunkwan Unversity in Suwon have become the factory floor for the knowledge workforce. It is appropriate and symbolic that our announcement is being made here, at one of Korea's best universities."
A video announcing the Smart21 of 2011 and short profiles of each community are available on ICF’s Web site at www.intelligentcommunity.org. The Smart21 were selected from among candidates large and small identified by nomination and independent research by the Forum.
About ICF
The Intelligent Community Forum is a think tank that studies the economic and social development of the 21st Century community. Whether in industrial or developing nations, communities are challenged to create prosperity, stability and cultural meaning in a world where jobs, investment and progress increasingly depend on broadband communications. For the 21st Century community, connectivity is a double-edge sword: threatening established ways of life on the one hand, and offering powerful new tools to build prosperous, inclusive economies on the other. The Intelligent Community Forum seeks to share the best practices of the world's Intelligent Communities in adapting to the demands of the Broadband Economy by conducting research, hosting events, publishing newsletters and producing an international awards program.
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Quelle/Source: Intelligent Community Forum, 21.10.2010
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