Founded in 1861 by Father Albert Lacome, the city of St. Albert is a striking blend of culture, history and community. St. Albert began as a small town around the Father Lacombe Chapel—which stills stands today on Mission Hill—in the Sturgeon River valley northwest of Edmonton and grew into the second-largest city in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. In addition to the Father Lacombe Chapel, the city is home to the St. Albert Grain Elevator Park, which houses two historic grain elevators. But for a city rich in historical sites, St. Albert is most defined by its community of residents constantly striving to improve life and embrace new innovation. St. Albert Place, located at the heart of the city, is a classic example of this attitude. It was designed by a world-renowned architect as a “people place” from the start and currently houses the St. Albert Public Library where residents can gather to learn about new technologies and opportunities in the modern world. This gathering of residents from local government positions, local businesses, academia and the general public has produced St. Albert’s Smart City Master Plan.

Access for All

A core component of St. Albert’s Smart City Master Plan is providing high-speed Internet access throughout the community. St. Albert has created its own municipal fiber optic network, which now connects half of the city’s municipal buildings, intersections and assets. The city plans to expand this coverage to all assets in the near future. St. Albert is also using this network to offer licensed wholesale access to community groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and local school districts, as well as to industry.

In addition to fiber, the city is expanding its cellular service infrastructure, including building new towers, new fiber backhaul, and new microcell installations to allow citizens to use their wireless cell service everywhere. St. Albert is working with service providers as part of this initiative to offer free Wi-Fi service in public places throughout the community with most free Wi-Fi locations now up and running.

Training the Workforce of the Future

St. Albert has developed several programs to help train its younger citizens for future careers and to assist young entrepreneurs in the more difficult phases of starting up. The city operates the Collective facility where local youth can access a series of Marketplace programs. The programs include skill-building workshops—such as Ready to Rent, a course that provides education and resources for finding and maintaining housing—counselling and outreach, entrepreneurship training with highly qualified mentors available and the Building Assets and Memories (BAM) program. The BAM program has attracted dozens of youth members who have organized retreats, a youth-issues conference, foreign missions and many popular community events. In addition to these programs, the Collective provides meeting spaces for youth to gather and exchange ideas and for entrepreneurs to get started on their companies.

Fostering an Innovation Ecosystem

To attract innovators to the city as well as provide an ideal environment for local entrepreneurs, St. Albert has partnered with residents and academic and industry leaders to establish itself as a “living lab.” Entrepreneurs and innovators can test their products, ideas, and commercialization plans in the city, making it an attractive place to build new businesses. Since becoming a living lab, St. Albert has seen resident entrepreneurs form an Innovation Council. Working together with the local chamber of commerce, business incubator and university, the Innovation Council launched the St. Albert Innovation Forum in 2017, an event open to the whole community where residents can share new ideas and debate policies for future competitiveness in the city. The Innovation Council has also created a Capital Partnership Program, a new platform to help innovators attract investors.

Digital Literacy at the Public Library

With Internet service rapidly approaching 100% availability in St. Albert, the city has turned to its library to train residents to use all the new technologies available to them. The St. Albert Public Library offers a wide array of digital literacy programs, including classes on using email, mobile devices, social media, Google apps and Microsoft Office products, as well as introductory programming, coding and game design courses. In addition to attending classes at the library, residents can also make use of the library’s Outreach Literacy Van, a mobile classroom staffed by a Community Outreach Librarian. The Literacy Van visits schools, clubs, churches and other community centers and provides a total of 60 different technology literacy programs with more being added each year. The library is currently planning a drop-in Makerspace program focusing on virtual reality, robotics and other emerging technologies to be launched sometime in 2018.

In addition to classes, the St. Albert Public Library has expanded its technological services, providing 45 public workstations with free Wi-Fi access for patrons. In 2017, these workstations saw more than 34,000 Internet work sessions. People have always been St. Albert’s greatest resource, and the city continues to nurture that resource, helping residents achieve their greatest potential and improve life for all.

Population: 65,589

Website: https://stalbert.ca

Smart21 2018

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Dan Mathieson, Former Mayor of Stratford.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Dan Mathieson, Former Mayor of Stratford.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Heartland Foward: Julie Trivitt, and Dave Shideler.

Townsville enjoys a seaside location with more than 300 days of sunshine per year and is often considered the capital of Northern Queensland, Australia. But it is no stranger to crisis, from the loss of key industries to natural disaster. It is pushing back with a relentless focus on innovation. The city has been and still is an industrial center, as it is home to one of the world’s largest zinc refineries, a major nickel refinery and other industries. Townsville is currently expanding its port as part of a $30 million operation to allow for passage of larger cargo and passenger ships. The city also contains a number of natural attractions, including “The Strand,” a long beach and garden strip, the Riverway parkland on the banks of the Ross River, a large tropical aquarium and museum, among others. Townsville aims to build on these strengths with further innovation and engagement with its own people and many visitors.

Connecting Townsville

Northern Australia’s physical distance from major markets has made access to affordable, high-speed internet access historically difficult. This has led to newer businesses, particularly in digital services, lagging substantially behind traditional industries in the region. The city aims to change that with the Townsville Connect program. The program will bring together multiple commercial partners in the region to establish a 10G network between major productive precincts of the city, such as the Health and Knowledge Precinct, as well as tertiary providers, key stakeholders and much of the small-to-medium business community. This first step will dramatically improve connectivity for key areas of the city, attracting new businesses to the region and providing a successful model to further expand broadband access in the future. As of 2020, the Townsville Connect program is midway through the EOI process for commercial partners.

Supporting the Community through Smart Precinct North Queensland

Beginning in 2019, Townsville has partnered with a variety of regional stakeholders, including James Cook University, Burdekin, Hinchinbrook, the Charters Towers and Palm Island Councils, Cubic, Safety Culture, TAFE and local entrepreneurs, to create Smart Precinct North Queensland (SPNQ). SPNQ has established itself as an innovation hub, the center of an innovation ecosystem made up of high-growth companies in North Queensland. Bringing together these stakeholders in one ecosystem will provide much-needed support for local start-ups and established businesses, as they work together to attract investments and build new technologies. Since its launch in 2019, SPNQ has deployed a new incubator program for the region, run eight community events, provided direct support to 25 local businesses and launched a hardware accelerator with a smart manufacturing initiative now in the works.

Building for the Future with the Townsville City Deal

The Townsville City Deal is a 15-year commitment between the national government of Australia, the state government of Queensland and the Townsville City Council. The City Deal lays out a plan for investment in Townsville through which government works with the private sector to improve infrastructure, attract investment, create new jobs and foster growth throughout the community. Thus far, the City Deal has led to a revitalization of the Waterfront Priority Development Area, growth of the Townsville Port and many new investments in the State Development Area. These infrastructure improvements have led to greater export and freight efficiency, facilitating business and service industry developments and making it easier to connect people and places throughout the region.

As of June 2020, the City Deal has led to the creation of the Townsville Smart City Strategy, the new North Queensland Country Bank Stadium and the Haughton Pipeline Duplication Project. It has also attracted significant investments for projects to develop Townsville’s global education and training programs with support from the Queensland Education and Training Partnership Fund.

Creating Water Sensitive Townsville

Beginning in 2015, the Townsville City Council worked with the Cooperative Research Center for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) to develop a Water Sensitive Vision and Transition Strategy for the city. As a dry tropical city, Townsville requires complex water management to maintain a healthy ecosystem and handle its dramatic natural water cycles. The project has thus far seen more than 7,000 smart water meters installed across the community, with each meter delivering data to a publicly accessible web portal. This allows the government, community members and businesses to identify leaks and other sources of high usage, providing ways to easily reduce water use.

Townsville’s focus on innovation, conservation and engagement with the community on both fronts has the city poised to lead North Queensland into a brighter and more connected future.

Population: 195,032

Website: www.townsville.qld.au.gov

Smart21 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Top7 2021

Photo by Leonhard Fortier

Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, is a business and technology center in its own right. The city grew into Canada’s sixth-most-populous municipality in the second half of the 20th century as it attracted a large multicultural population around its thriving central business district. Mississauga is home to Canada’s busiest airport as well as many of the nation’s major corporations. Outside the business district, the city also has an impressive arts community and is home to many major festivals, including Carassauga, the second-largest culture festival in Canada. Many of these festivals take place in Mississauga’s Celebration Square, the city’s recently restructured and vibrant Civic Square. Mississauga began as a collection of many hamlets and villages, each with their own distinct cultural offerings, that have led to the city’s rich and diverse heritage and cultural offerings today.

Ensuring Access Across Mississauga

Mississauga’s impressive business district has made it an attractive market for ISPs. The city encourages continued expansion with a streamlined online system for the trenching and installation permits that ISPs need. Each step in the application process is automated, with the appropriate agencies notified whenever their approval is needed and the ISPs kept in the loop at each step. Mississauga has processed more than 17,000 applications in the past four years. This streamlined process keeps competition strong among ISPs in the area, driving down prices and improving connectivity offerings for the city as a whole.

Leveraging Connectivity to Promote Open Government

Mississauga has leveraged its competitive connectivity to help citizens, from a cloud-based system that makes connecting with government easy to a Digital Main Street program that helps small businesses go online. Established in 2015, Mississauga’s Open Data Policy requires the city to publish much of its collected digital data in an open data portal for easy citizen access. This allows citizens to be better informed about how their government functions and what projects are being given the most attention and funding. To ensure that citizens and businesses make the best use of this data, which now includes 230 total datasets with many more planned, the city provides training in the use of its data portal as well.

In October 2020, Mississauga’s annual hackathon took the form of a Smart City Open Data Challenge. The month-long virtual event saw 9 teams of high-school-aged students – assisted by industry presentations and other guidance from 11 event partners – analyze and develop new strategies for the city’s social and economic resilience, particularly during COVID-19. All insights and strategies were based on open data provided by the city with each student team submission collected and displayed in a Smart City Open Data Showcase available to the whole community. The Smart City Open Data Challenge also provided an opportunity for student participants to build their resumes and network with peers in the larger community.

Closing the Digital Divide

To help citizens take better advantage of improved connectivity, Mississauga instituted a Laptop Lending Program through its public library beginning in 2017. The program includes 100 wireless hotspots, more than 30 Chromebooks and over 100 laptops to be provided to community members without easy computer access for work and school. Patrons with a valid library card can check out the wireless hotspots as needed. Chromebooks are currently only available for use in-library, but the city plans to allow external lending beginning in 2021. The collection of 100 laptops was provided to local school boards to be lent out to children who don’t have access to computers at home for their school work. Laptop lending in schools is currently part of a pilot project with further expansions planned in the future.

Through these and other efforts, Mississauga aims to maintain its strong position in a high-tech future.

Population: 801,887

Website: www.mississauga.ca

Smart21 2021

Top7 2021

Photo by WOMeos

Maple Ridge is one of British Columbia’s oldest cities, having been incorporated in 1874. The city has a largely rural and agrarian history with forestry still serving as Maple Ridge’s largest private-sector employer. Maple Ridge’s beautiful forests, as well as Ridge Film Studios in the city’s downtown, have served to make it a popular location for feature films and television series as well. The city has focused on its cultural beauty as its population swells, hosting a wide variety of annual festivals and parades, and one of the largest Remembrance Day celebrations on the Lower Mainland. In the 21st century, Maple Ridge is looking ever more toward the future, planning redevelopments, commercial and industrial expansions and more with its people to guide it every step of the way.

Connecting a Widely Spread and Growing Population

To connect its growing population, the city has built a municipally owned data center to meet its own needs and provide a meet-me point to attract internet providers. Maple Ridge is also working with its partners on the project to create a revenue sharing model for scalable services to further facilitate internet providers sharing space in the facility. The city is simultaneously following a “dig once” strategy by building out conduit in areas under development or repair to encourage more private-sector investment. As of 2020, the city has connected 36% of its facilities to its fiber network with more to come.

Training the Future Workforce

To ensure the best possible education for its students, the city has persuaded the BC Institute of Technology (BCIT) to open satellite campuses at its high schools. Through this program, students gain technical skills and real-world experiences, as BCIT leverages its network of alumni and partners to learn more about which skills are most valued by local employers. Rapid growth has resulted in shortages of many of these skills, so BCIT is also working with two of Maple Ridge’s high schools to run trade skills development courses for 11th and 12th grade students. This program provides the students with apprenticeship opportunities, allowing them to transition into highly skilled jobs upon graduation.

The city also persuaded BCIT to launch a maritime technology program at the Justice Institute in Maple Ridge. Beyond the high school level, BCIT offers practical career credentials for post-secondary students based on input from government and local industries. These collaborations with BCIT have already produced at 300% increase in job creation since 2019.

Improving Quality of Life Through Community Engagement

Quality of life is a major focus for the City of Maple Ridge. To ensure that it pursues improvements that will mean the most to its people, the city has sought feedback and ideas from local businesses and other key stakeholders as well as the community at large through a series of programs.

In 2019, Maple Ridge held its first Town Centre Business Walk based on collaboration between the Business Improvement Association (BIA) and the City and Chamber of Commerce. Business Walks are annual events designed to measure the economic climate of a community by walking around business neighborhoods and gathering data through surveys of 5-10 questions. The Maple Ridge Economic Development Department will use the data gathered to revise and update its retention and expansion plans accordingly. The 2019 Town Centre Business Walk was a rousing success with local businesses seeing their needs met and voices heard. Maple Ridge plans to continue the practice going forward, with some expected adaptations needed for the 2020 Business Walk, due to the pandemic.

To make Maple Ridge a great place to both live and age in, the city has undertaken a mapping program to help seniors navigate more easily. The program mapped walking, transit and driving routes across the entire city, noting details like accessible parking and amenity locations and roughly how long it will take to walk to a destination. The Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Katzie Seniors Network designed the program and sought input from hundreds of seniors throughout the community as to what would be most valuable for their daily lives. To ensure that the program sees as much use as possible, the city library and the Seniors Activity Centre provide training in its use. Maple Ridge hopes to expand the program beyond just the city in the future by working with other interested communities.

Maple Ridge has even bigger plans in store as well. As its population rapidly grows, the city aims to redevelop its Town Centre as a business and cultural core, focusing on its historic points of interest and unique character. To ensure this redevelopment aligns with the public’s needs, Maple Ridge established the Town Centre Area Plan (TCAP) to guide the project. The city aims to explore how the Town Centre can better support businesses, provide an inclusive environment for all citizens and grow as an attractive destination for visitors. Maple Ridge city has held a number of engagement events for the TCAP, including an urban design visioning event, “A Scoop for Your Scoop” event in Memorial Peace Park that included free ice cream in exchange for passing visitors’ input and a Walkshop, in which participants wander the Town Centre documenting their impressions and ideas. In 2020 alone, more than 750 people have provided input and ideas for the TCAP.

Population is just one of many growth areas in Maple Ridge today as the city builds new infrastructure and new connections between its government, businesses and people.

Population: 91,222

Website: www.mapleridge.ca

Smart21 2021 | 2022

Photo by Juraj Tatár

The Township of Langley has a long and storied history that includes millennia of occupation by the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations before European settlers built Fort Langley – often called “the birthplace of British Columbia” – in the early 1800s. The rural township was incorporated in 1873 and continued to grow and flourish as transportation expanded in Canada, from the British Columbia Electric Railway to the Fraser Highway. Langley experienced its greatest yet economic boom post World War II when the Trans-Canada Highway brought convenience and new vigor to its suburbs. In the modern era, the township has put its energies into engaging all sectors of the community in progress, having developed a heritage center to open dialogue with the First Nations while also looking to the community at large for guidance on policy decisions and more.

Increasing Broadband Access through Competition

In 2016, the Township of Langley established a Municipal Access Agreement (MAA) to allow uniform, equal and simplified access for third-party ISPs to the town’s infrastructure. The agreement is designed to promote competition between telcos by removing barriers to entry to ensure lower prices and the best possible service in the area. Standardizing the application process also allows ISPs to focus on adopting recent technologies and exploring new methods for delivery and service improvement, rather than constantly struggling with red tape. The MAA has already shown results, with Shaw Communications announcing the availability of its Fiber+ offering in Langley and Telus incrementally deploying its PureFibre offering as well. All providers in the area are also working to deploy 5G cellular infrastructure across the municipality.

Supporting the Current and Future Workforce

Working closely with the provincial and federal Canadian governments, the Township of Langley has established a WorkBC Centre within the community to assist people seeking employment. WorkBC provides up to 35 hours of training through local public and private colleges free of charge. It also offers services to employers in the form of online job postings and promotion of them via social media, applicant pre-screenings, tailored mini-hiring fairs and multi-employer job fairs, internship opportunities and employee training grants. To ensure that WorkBC Langley is meeting both job seekers’ and employers’ needs in the community, the Langley School District regularly meets with WorkBC representatives to share information on programs and collaborate on initiatives. The Township has also provided data to WorkBC from its job posting data analysis software to allow WorkBC to better understand local trends and skill needs. In 2019 alone, WorkBC Langley helped more than 1,500 people.

The Township also provides many services to students through the Langley School District’s Career Education Department. The department offers career exploration workshops and tours throughout the school year for secondary and middle schools, allowing students to meet professionals working various fields and ask questions about their experiences. The Career Education Department has developed the WAVE Program, which places students in grades 10-12 in volunteer positions to earn future job experience. A large number of local employers participate in the program, including Fraser Health, Langley City Fire Department, Langley Memorial Hospital, Langley Township Fire Department and Langley School District Summer Maintenance. The department also offers Youth TRAIN in Trades programs, in which students participate in technical trades apprenticeships in exchange for credits towards graduation and post-secondary credits.

Engaging the Community in Policy through Open Data

Langley is one of very few municipalities in British Columbia to offer all of its online services through a single personalized login, leading to much greater accessibility for citizens. The Township continuously adds new functionality to its online tools to help the population interact with government in meaningful ways, including allowing citizens to submit tickets to fix potholes and other infrastructure issues and to track progress on those tickets. The Township government also offers an Open Data Portal to make as much information available as possible to community members. Users can login to view data on development activity, property crimes, business licenses, roads and truck routes, parks and trails and more. The Township has recently acquired additional data visualization tools through LocalIntell, enabling businesses to analyze demographics and other economic indicators to improve decision making.

In addition to facilitating eGovernment engagement, the Township of Langley has also focused on social engagement through a Public Engagement Charter, established in 2016. The Charter provides a high-level policy framework for the Township to follow to involve citizens in community planning and development. Following guidance from the Charter, Langley launched the Brookswood-Fernridge Community Plan to update the one previously set out in 1987. Through multiple stages of community consultation, workshops, dialogue sessions, open houses and public hearings, residents and stakeholders gathered to shape the new Plan based on their collective understanding of community needs.

In 2018, Canada’s federal Cannabis Act and Cannabis Regulations came into effect, legalizing recreational cannabis. Before allowing retail sales in Langley, the Township Council held a series of open houses to present the public with information on storefront cannabis retail, government roles and responsibilities and an opportunity to ask direct questions and clarify information. Through this engagement strategy, the Township was able to develop its Cannabis Retail Sales Policy with a focus on both responsibility and profitability for the community as a whole.

Adopting a Sustainability Charter

In 2008, the Township of Langley adopted a Sustainability Charter to shape initiatives for a greener future. Since the Charter’s adoption, the Township has created a number of successful programs, including the Green Building Rebates program, which provides financial incentives for builders and homeowners to implement green design principles and appliances. The Empower Me program is an award-winning energy conservation and behavior change program offered in many languages that helps community members to better understand their energy bills and the choices available to them, allowing them to save money and energy while increasing comfort. Langley has also established tree-planting requirements for all public areas and a bylaw that requires private developments to plant roughly 30 trees per acre.

In tandem with these programs, the Township has implemented green policies for municipal assets and infrastructure. Langley’s Main Hall has received an international mark of excellence for being the first municipal hall in Canada to be certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) CI Silver. The Township has built a public-transit fleet of multiple electric vehicles as well as many hybrids with GPS tracking systems to support route planning and fuel management. Many of the Township’s facilities have been upgraded from standard gas boilers to 98% efficiency-condensing boilers, and its Municipal Hall boiler system also incorporates solar panels.

Through these programs and more, the Township of Langley has engaged its people from all walks of life in creating a stronger, more prosperous future together.

Population: 135,000

Website: www.tol.ca

Smart21 2021 | 2022

Top7 2021

Photo by Colin Stepney

Fairlawn is a small city in northeastern Ohio, covering fewer than 5 square miles. Unlike most cities its size, however, it serves as a major business and consumer destination during daylight hours, sometimes hosting nearly 40,000 people—5 times its population of 7,460—across its major mall and large areas of prime office space. And yet, in spite of its obvious attraction, Fairlawn has historically had trouble recruiting businesses and even residents due to the same poor Internet service offerings that plagues most of Ohio. The city decided to take matters into its own hands in 2015 by establishing its own fiber network as critical infrastructure for a growing 21st century economy.

Connecting the City with FairlawnGig

After running market research and investigating its options from the private sector, the city of Fairlawn established its own fiber-to-everywhere network in 2015, dubbing it FairlawnGig. The network was funded by $10.1 million from the Fairlawn General Fund, requiring zero taxpayer investment, and now provides access to up to 10 Gigabit service for all residences and up to 100 Gigabit services for businesses across the whole city. The network also provides complimentary wireless access in public areas of the city, including all parks and Fairlawn’s busy main street corridor, allowing visitors quick access to tourist and other online information.

FairlawnGig was completed in 2017 and has since expanded to serve the Akron/Bath/Fairlawn Joint Economic Development District. Since its completion, the city has seen 15 new businesses moving into the area, 250 new jobs opening up and an increase in home sales as residents can now access modern educational opportunities, healthcare options and other essential services. FairlawnGig has also reduced costs dramatically for both residents and the city government itself, as customers now pay roughly 1% of the previous price for Internet services and the city saves more than $100,000 per year in operational expenses due to better infrastructure.

Providing the Tools to Use New Internet Services in Education

With FairlawnGig established, the Copley-Fairlawn City School District began looking for the best way to make use of its new services. The district established One to One in 2019 as a pilot program that would provide every student with a Google Chromebook for educational purposes. Under the program, all students in grades 3 through 12 receive a Chromebook, charger and protective case, as well as instruction on digital citizenship, Internet safety and responsible use and proper care for their devices. Younger students are provided access to a classroom set of Chromebooks instead and do not take them home each night, unlike the older students.

Chromebook distribution allows Fairlawn students to explore the wealth of educational opportunities online and develop further interests in learning outside the classroom. After the pilot program proved successful in 2019, One to One is being rolled out throughout the entire school system in 2020.

Engaging Citizens on the Benefits of FairlawnGig

While FairlawnGig is the United States’ first broadband municipal utility, it is an Internet-only service that does not include video. This means that customers will need to give up cable TV access to sign up. To prepare residents for this change, the city has held numerous events to teach potential adopters about streaming services and how to get access to the content they want via FairlawnGig, in addition to completely new opportunities they may not have even considered. FairlawnGig has also established a regular eNewsletter to the community, through which it provides updates, tips, answers to questions and suggestions for better broadband utilization, as well as local business success stories. The network’s partners promote FairlawnGig as well through a variety of media, including Youtube.

With so much to teach, FairlawnGig has also focused on training its technicians to educate customers in using their new services. Each installation is considered a training, with teams explaining application and streaming options to customers directly while completing the technical aspects onsite. For local businesses, installation teams also provide advice and solutions for networking, cabling, colocation, cloud storage, internal WiFi networks and many other topics. Thanks to these efforts, FairlawnGig has reached a 49% adoption rate in only 3 years, nearly half of the city’s intended 100% target.

With the broadband barrier overcome, the future looks bright in Fairlawn, as visitors and businesses see new opportunities and residents access new services for a better life.

Population: 7,460

Website: www.cityoffairlawn.com

Smart21 2021

Photo by Mark Turnauckas

The Regional Municipality of Durham, known informally as Durham Region, was founded in 1974 to address the needs of this rapidly expanding area. With a current population of more than 750,000 that is projected to reach 1.3 million by 2051, the demand for efficient, coordinated regional services continues to grow.

Today, Durham Region provides shared services and program coordination to eight local area municipalities consisting of cities, towns and townships in Ontario, Canada. These services support diverse communities and a range of economic sectors from agriculture to clean energy. With 80% of Durham Region zoned as protected green space or agricultural lands, agriculture is a major sector in the region. Durham Region is the Clean Energy Capital of Canada, providing about 30% of the province's energy needs. Energy engineering is a major employer as a result, with innovative projects like the first grid-tied small modular reactor being developed in the region. Durham is also home to automotive manufacturing, a thriving film production industry, and globally recognized research facilities such as the multi-climate ACE Climatic Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel.
 

Bringing Broadband to the Underserved

The rural populations of Durham, like most such areas, are generally underserved by ISPs that struggle to make an investment case for network growth. Basic internet access is available to 98% of businesses and residences, and good broadband service reaches cities, suburbs and the affluent shoreline communities of Lake Ontario. But an estimated 21% of households and more than 1,000 businesses remained underserved.

Learning from peer communities, the Region developed a plan to build a 750-km middle-mile fiber-optic network along rights of way controlled by the Region or one of its communities. Investment in a middle-mile network can substantially reduce the cost and risk to ISPs of bringing high-speed broadband to new markets. They lease capacity at attractive rates from the middle-mile provider and extend from that network to subscribers at a fraction of the cost of a complete build-out.  The middle-mile, if properly planned, can also provide capacity directly to Regional and municipal facilities, universities, schools and hospitals (MUSH).

In 2020, the Region began to put the plan into practice. It held extensive meetings with all municipalities and townships to develop collaboration on managing rights of way and permitting.  They led to a successful effort to create a local and regional online process that slashed turnaround time for network construction permits, which reduced risk for private-sector investors. 

The Region also established a government-owned company called Durham OneNet, which developed the processes and contractor relationships to do design, construction and operation – and most importantly, to move at the speed of business. Durham OneNet completed the first 36km leg of the network in a rural area, finishing on budget and ahead of schedule. That led to deployment of high-speed service by 12 wireless ISPs to four rural communities and leasing of fiber to a mix of MUSH facilities. This was followed by the successful application for provincial and Federal funding to cover the next 250 km expansion of the middle mile network.

Building a New Economy

Agriculture may dominate the economy, but it is challenged by the reluctance of the next generation to stay on the farm. Based on the Growing Agri-Food Durham Plan 2023-2027, the Region works with the 2-year Durham College and 4-year Ontario Tech University to alert young people through videos, websites and classroom presentations to modern agriculture’s demand for marketable skills in finance, nutrition, technology and agronomy. Augmenting this core program is a precision agriculture career day and pathway programs that guide high school students to higher education in agriculture, as well as a popular training program for farmers in diversifying their businesses.

These two schools are at the heart of the Region’s efforts to create a knowledge-based, innovation ecosystem. Durham College has, over the past five years, developed partnerships with all the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce in the region, which has pro­vided membership to 3,500 students. The partnerships deploy a range of pro­grams from invitations to chamber events, workshops on everything from critical thinking to setting up a LinkedIn profile, and invitations to established businesses and entrepreneurs to speak on campus. The FastStart program is one example, offering local businesses the opportunity to bring their challenges to the college to be addressed by a team of students led by an instructor. 

Ontario Tech University has 3,000 students participating in a program called Experience Ventures, funded by the Canadian government and the University of Calgary, which provide experien­tial learning opportunities to students across Canada. They are designed to ignite creativity, resilience and entrepreneurship while equipping students with high-value skills. An Employ­ment Readiness Program teaches practical job skills (aka, soft skills) and the fundamentals of networking, which are vital skills for young people. Brilliant Catalyst, an incubator at Ontario Tech, runs hackathons to attract students locally and across Canada, then guides them in developing, validating and commercializing business ideas. Like the University of Waterloo, the university does not take an ownership position in companies or their IP, so the Fund provides it with an opportunity to transparently invest in 15 companies over a 3-year period, mainly in energy, mobility and eco-tech. Ontario Tech also hosted Project Arrow, a 2022 collaboration among Canadian’ automotive manufacturers to build a complete, zero-emission concept car to jumpstart the nation’s capabilities in this future growth market.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is another contributor to regional innovation. It is developing a standardized design for an inherently safe, small modular reactor that can receive safety certification to speed installation wherever new generation is needed. OPG also developed a world-class training center to create the workforce it needs for a major refurbishment of its oldest reactor complex. OPG has founded the Canadian Center for Nuclear Sustainability (CCNS) as an innovation hub focused on sustainable decommissioning, waste stewardship and site repurposing of nuclear plants at end of life. At the end of 2023, OPG announced that it would move its headquarters from Toronto into Durham, bringing a meaningful percentage of its 10,000 employees there.

With a mix of purpose-built “back lots” and historic buildings, Durham Region is a prominent location for film and TV production. Over the past 10 years, film and TV production has grown by 260% in the Region, driven by easy access from Toronto, where Canada’s media industry is concentrated. To keep the industry growing, the Region works with unions to attract talent through a series of career days, each focused on different careers from skilled trades to production, cinematography, lighting, costumes and make-up.

Bringing Opportunity to More People

The Canada Learning Bond provides low-income families with financial assistance to access post-secondary education for their children. But the application process is so complicated that only 40% of eligible children were receiving the bond. The Region formed a partnership with multiple levels of government, school boards, businesses and charities to host sign up events and offer eligible families everything they needed to get the bond. It resulted 500 new children receiving the Bond in the first year.

The Region’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department engages with people who would otherwise be invisible and gives the Region the perspective to understand them and their needs. Programs include work experience in Region offices for students with disabilities, an athletic and teaching facility designed for people of all abilities, and housing facilities with wraparound services for long-time citizens and newcomers.

Engaging the Community in Making Government Better

In 2019, the Durham Region launched the myDurham 311 project to improve the customer experience for residents seeking government services and community information. The project consolidates all call centers into one and provides contact channels via online, phone, chat or other options. As a regional program, myDurham 311 faced the challenge of coordinating with all the local area municipalities in the Region. Over 60 publicly listed phone numbers were amalgamated into one 311 number with the help of 23 different service providers.

While 311 services are commonplace, Durham’s development process was not. The Region consulted 400 residents from diverse backgrounds on what the project should deliver. This input led to a design for myDurham 311 that uses the latest technology to provide multiple, easy-to-use paths to the right information or service. It is based on a centralized customer management database that automatically creates work orders and service requests in municipal and regional systems, as well as powering an intuitive user portal where customers can track their engagement with the Region, check bills and learn transaction status. A follow-on partnership with a Federal innovation center and local company added access by Google Home and Amazon Echo.

Cleaner, Smarter Energy

In response to the growing impacts of climate change, the Regional Council declared a climate emergency in 2018 and began development of the Durham Community Energy Plan (DCEP). The plan seeks to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy in the region while providing additional economic and social benefits. The DCEP outlines a path to electrifying transportation and retrofitting building stock to address Durham’s largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, with work beginning on the first community-scale projects in 2020. On the residential side, the Durham Home Energy Savings Program stimulates homeowner demand for energy-efficiency home renovations. The program aims to eventually retrofit most of the Region’s 200,000+ existing single-family homes by 2050, providing 40-50% energy savings per home.

The Durham Region began working with ICF in 2020 and has steadily applied the lessons its leaders have learned.  An informal gathering of advisors has become a formal steering committee for transformation. ICF’s Community Accelerator strategy has been adopted as its economic and community development framework. And through Community Assessments and participation in the Awards program, the Region has learned how to leverage its public, private and nonprofit resources to create the innovative, inclusive economy taking shape across the municipalities and townships it serves.

Population: 750,000

Website: www.durham.ca/en/index

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Photo by Chris Harte