The City of Ottawa is test-driving eight projects for a “municipal innovation pilot program.”

The crop of start-ups – picked from a pool of 65 local and national applicants – includes cyber security, social media analytics and cloud software companies.

MONTREAL — Quebec is greatly increasing the number of fast-charge stations for electric vehicles along one of the province’s busiest highways.

The government says quick-charging stations will be added in two phases in six communities along Highway 20 between Montreal and Mont-Joli, about 580 kilometres away.

Ericsson believes cities need to rethink existing structures to fully grasp the potential of ICT to make sure that ‘smart’ is also sustainable.

London continues to be one of the world’s most ICT-mature cities, missing out only to Stockholm, a new study finds.

People who live in big metropolises, like New York City, London or Hong Kong, often say that they can always find someone within a few miles who has a special skill they need to complete some project or build a business. I’ve pointed out that the close proximity of millions of people with so many different skills is part of what has made cities successful economic engines during the industrial era.

Montreal has been named 2016 Intelligent Community of the Year in recognition of its Smart City plan, which was introduced in 2011. The honour was bestowed by the Intelligent Community Forum at an event at the Columbus Zoo on Thursday.

Rio de Janeiro’s Knowledge Squares Program Also Honored with Visionary of Year Award

(June 16, 2016 – Columbus, Ohio, USA & New York City, NY, USA) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named Montreal, Quebec, Canada as the 2016 Intelligent Community of the Year at a dinner ceremony in the prestigious Africa Event Center at the Columbus Zoo. The awards ceremony was the conclusion of the Intelligent Community Forum’s annual Summit. Montreal succeeds Columbus, which also was the host city for the 2016 ICF Summit, as the think-tank’s annual Intelligent Community of the Year. Also at the Awards Dinner, Rio de Janeiro’s Knowledge Squares Program was honored with ICF’s prestigious Visionary of the Year award.

In my last post, I wrote about the ladder of opportunity created by a remarkable high school in Winnipeg – created, not alone, but in collaboration with colleges, universities and with the active support of city government.  Now I want to write about the next rungs that lead from building skills to building companies.  

In early April, I was in the city of Winnipeg in the Canadian Midwest. There I got a lesson in the construction of ladders. Not the kind of ladder on which I make the dangerous climb to clean out my gutters. The kind that helps people of all ages to access opportunity.

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is the original smart cities organization formed in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – initially as the Canadian Smart Cities Institute (CSCI), which worked with the World Teleport Association to organize SMART95, the first smart city conference, held in Toronto in September 1995. The CSCI evolved into the Intelligent Community Forum as a global, but New York City-based non-profit think tank, when it moved from Canada to NYC in the late 1990’s. So, yes, we have been around for a considerable time.

Dr. Roberto Gallardo has published a new book titled Responsive Countryside: The Digital Age and Rural Communities. Dr. Gallardo is the founder and leader of the Mississippi State University Extension Service Intelligent Community Institute (MSUES-ICI), part of a worldwide network that assists rural communities to better plan for and prosper in the digital age. A brief description of the book follows.