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(New York City, 15 May 2009 – 1445 ET) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named Stockholm, Sweden the Intelligent Community of the Year for 2009 at an awards ceremony this afternoon at Steiner Film Studios in Brooklyn, New York. The Scandanavian community, known for its prowess in innovative technologies and its quality of life, was represented by a delegation led by its Vice Mayor Ulf Kristersson, which included its Consul General, Ambassador Ulf Hjertonsson. ICF Co-Founder Louis Zacharilla presented the award to Stockholm, which succeeded the Gangnam District of Seoul (Korea), the 2008 recipient.
“This is a community that has methodically and substantially redefined the possibilities of urban living and sets an example of how technology can play a role to enhance economic and social development,” said Zacharilla.
Also recognized were the recipients of the ICF’s Visionary of the Year Award and its three annual Founders Awards. The annual awards are presented by the independent think tank as part of its annual conference, Building the Broadband Economy, produced in association with the Institute for Technology & Enterprise at New York University’s Polytechnic school in New York (USA).
The goal of the awards is to increase awareness of the role that broadband and information communications technology (ICT) play in economic and social development at the community level worldwide. The mayors, CIOs and heads of technology companies from around the world were on hand to meet during the three day, invitation-only Summit and awards program.
www.icfsummit.com
Intelligent Community of the Year 2009: Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm, on Sweden's south-central east coast, has been Sweden´s political, cultural and economic center since the 1200s. One out of every eleven Swedes lives in Stockholm, and in the first decade of the new century, their city has continued to find ways to make "big" work better. The economy benefits enormously from Stockholm's status as the political and cultural capital. Most of the country's head offices and one in three foreign-owned companies are located there. Nearly one in three new Swedish companies is located in the county of which Stockholm is the capital. Education levels are high (51% of Stockholmers have studied at university levels compared with 35% nationwide) and average salaries are proportionally higher.
During a national fiscal crisis in the early Nineties, the City of Stockholm decided to pursue an unusual model in telecommunications. The city-owned company Stokab started in 1994 to build a fiber-optic network throughout the municipality as a level playing field for all operators. Stokab dug up the streets once to install conduit and run fiber, closed them up, and began offering dark fiber capacity to carriers for less than it would cost them to install it themselves. Today, the 1.2 million kilometer (720,000-mile) network has more than 90 operators and 450 enterprises as primary customers and is now in the final year of a three-year project to bring fiber to 100% of public housing, which is expected to add 95,000 households to the network. Stockholm's Mayor has set a goal of connecting 90% of all households to fiber by 2012.
In 2007, the City of Stockholm published Vision 2030, identifying the key characteristics the city aimed to have by that year. In 2030, according to the plan, Stockholm would be a world-class metropolis offering a rich urban living experience, the center of an internationally competitive innovation region, and a place where citizens enjoyed a broad range of high-quality, cost-effective social services.
More information is available on the Intelligent Community Profiles pages of the ICF Web site:
http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/index.php?src=news&refno=304&category=Community
Louis Zacharilla, ICF Co-founder, congratulated the new Intelligent Community of the Year, saying, “Stockholm has expertly demonstrated how a culture of use has formed within the context of Stockholm’s policy commitments, especially those to the environment, business and care for its citizens. Stockholm is an ambitious community and on the move. Stockholm
