(19 October 2016 – New York City & Niagara Falls, ON, Canada) - The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named the world’s Smart21 Communities of 2017.  This select group of communities, which emerged from a group of nearly 400, will now move on and remain in contention for the prestigious designation of an Intelligent Community Top7, to be named in Taipei, Taiwan in February 2017.  One of the seven will then be named Intelligent Community of the Year at the Intelligent Community Summit and Awards Dinner in New York on June 8, 2017.   www.intelligentcommunity.org/summit

As Montreal's original Metro cars are being gradually pulled out of service, at least a few of the 50-year-old cars will be getting second lives.

As part of an event celebrating the Metro's 50 years, the STM recently announced seven projects it has tentatively approved after putting out a call for proposals this spring.

There is a small ray of light in this dark American election season. The Presidential contenders actually agree on something: the need to bring back manufacturing in America. To quote from an editorial by Binyamin Applebaum:

Trump’s keynote proposal is to encourage domestic production by taxing imports — an idea more likely to cause a recession than a manufacturing revival. Clinton is promising to basically extend the efforts of the Obama administration, which said it would create a million factory jobs. With just a few months left, the president is still more than 600,000 jobs short.

TAIPEI--Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je said Thursday that he considers the Netherlands to be an excellent model for Taipei to learn from and plans to visit the country next year.

Shortly after winning the mayoral election in November 2014, Ko said Taipei would overtake Singapore within eight years, but changed his mind after six months in office.

Big Data is big business. But what difference does it really make in the cities, suburbs and towns where we make our homes? Does the Big Data future belong entirely to the big tech companies like Google and Facebook? Or are there benefits that matter to the rest of us in the place called home? Robert Bell is a co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum and co-author of Brain Gain: How Innovative Cities Create Job Growth in an Age of Disruption and he joins Carol Maresca and Corey Johnson to talk about it.

Last week 192 nations were in New York sorting through the world’s problems, while I was trying to sort through the traffic jams they were creating in my world: the streets of New York. When the peacemakers come to town, blessed though they may be, our traffic gets miserable. However, as the home of the United Nations, we live with the hope that we are hosting people who will make the world safer and happier – or at least happier than my taxi driver.

But for the record, 85% of my trips around the city were via public transit. Blessed be IT! Let us have more of it.

The City of Calgary today celebrated a groundbreaking event for the Stoney Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) Bus Storage and Transit Facility.

The new 44,300 square metre facility will provide storage and maintenance space for Calgary Transit’s new fleet of CNG buses, as well as diesel buses that are currently stored outside the City’s other bus garages. The complex will be capable of housing a minimum of 424 buses, 36 maintenance bays, two steam cleaning bays, on-site compressed natural gas fuelling infrastructure, and associated staff facilities.

Since Estonia’s capital started providing free public transport for residents in 2013, it claims to have turned a €20m a year profit each year. But has the scheme achieved its ambitions of reducing traffic and saving people money?

In London a monthly travel card for the whole city costs almost £200. In Copenhagen, a city a fraction of the size, you’ll pay £160. So when you ask the residents of Tallinn about the benefits of free travel across the city, it’s a surprise to be met with a roll of the eyes or a sarcastic smile.

The federal, provincial and municipal governments have combined to support a pilot program that will help match immigrant entrepreneurs in New Brunswick with business owners looking to sell.

“Succession Connect” is expected to address two high priority issues: an aging workforce looking to retire, and the need to attract immigrants to the province.

A European Union (EU) funded programme organised a study visit to Eindhoven, Netherlands, for programme participants to learn about its strategy in creating high tech incubators.

The sponsoring programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) (COSME) is a 54 month programme with the responsibility to allocate 15M Euros to projects benefiting participating Caribbean Territories. The funds were made available by the EU. The programme’s overall objective is to contribute to the sustainable and climate-resilient economic diversification and prosperity of Overseas Caribbean Territories (OCTs) by improving the competitiveness of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the participating territories.