Part of the 2025 ICF Delegation meeting with New Taipei City’s Mayor Hou
 

For the past three years, the Intelligent Community Forum has taken a delegation to attend the annual Smart City Summit & Expo and Net Zero City Expo (SCSE) in Taipei. From a small, largely Canadian delegation in the first year, the past two years have attracted significant numbers of international attendees to be part of ICF’s Delegation to the SCSE and associated site visits. This year, thirty-one delegates from Canada, USA, Brazil, Spain, and the Netherlands joined ICF Canada and ICF Taiwan’s organizers to attend the SCSE and undertake visits to meet the mayors of Taoyuan, New Taipei City, and Yunlin County. In each of these gatherings, in addition to the formalities, the mayors explained why their communities have become among the best smart cities and Intelligent Communities in Taiwan. They noted that they are leading in applying digital communications technologies in health, emergency response, education, traffic control, urban planning, and overall quality of life for their citizens. As the delegation learned over the course of their visit to Taiwan – these communities excel in not only digital connectivity and AIoT applications, they also train knowledge workers and the talent to innovate and become global entrepreneurs. And with innovation, they share their prosperity with all of their citizens who have developed a culture of engagement and respect for sustainability, all key factors of smart cities to evolve into true Intelligent Communities.
 

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla moderates the conversation with Co-Founders, Robert Bell and John Jung and Executive Director, Matthew Owen.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla moderates the conversation with Co-Founders, Robert Bell and John Jung and Executive Director, Matthew Owen.

O fundador do Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), John Jung, está em Curitiba para a avaliação da cidade antes da eleição da comunidade mais inteligente do mundo. A capital paranaense é uma das sete finalistas ao prêmio, que será entregue em novembro em Barcelona, durante o ICF Global Summit. Assaí, no interior do estado, também concorre ao título em 2024. As duas cidades paranaenses são as únicas da América Latina na lista deste ano.

Binh Duong is on the right track towards its goal of smart and sustainable development when focusing on innovation, shifting to modern industries with high added value, and investing in infrastructure, social housing and education, said a supervision delegation from the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

The delegation, led by John Jung, co-founder of ICF, made the assessment on September 7 at a working session with leaders of Binh Duong during their trip to the southern province to inspect the realisation of goals and proposed orientation in the coming time.

In this special edition of The Intelligent Community, Lou Zacharilla is joined by ICF Co-Founder John G. Jung, to discuss Jung's book "Black Rock." 

Can global “No-Name” cities act as some of the world's best models as smart and Intelligent communities? You bet! Look at the current list of the SMART21 cities and the TOP7 Intelligent Communities this year to get a clue.

Among the world’s smartest examples include cities you may never have heard of before such as Whanganui, New Zealand; Townsville, Queensland, Australia; Elefsina, Attica, Greece; and Markham, Ontario, Canada. Each one of these cities offers initiatives, programs and governance examples that exhibit best practices that communities around the world can learn from or be inspired to emulate. From the 2022 ICF Smart21 list, you probably have only heard of four cities before: Adelaide, Belfast, Philadelphia, and Rochester. Some of you may have heard of two or three more on that list. But I bet most of you have never heard of the rest. But you should. They may have solutions, ideas and pathways leading to your next innovation staring you in the face.

Will you be living on an Intelligent Street?

In a post Covid world I anticipate a much different respect for the hyper-local aspects of communities than we exhibited before the pandemic. Over the time we stayed closer to our homes we discovered our neighborhoods, local markets and restaurants and the street in front of our homes. We got to know our neighbors, the local store clerks, and our postal service delivery representatives. I am certain that once we feel confident to once again travel further than our neighborhoods, we will explore cities, regions and international destinations once again.

What will our cities look like post-COVID? Will we ever trust our cities again? Is "density" the new enemy of urban planning? In this new segment of No Place BUT Home, we look at issues of vital importance that relate to the health, design & economic future of the places we live.

At the beginning of the New Year in 2020 we were looking at the threat of war rising out of the rhetoric coming out of Washington and from Tehran. I had a flight planned to travel to Kuwait in January to give a keynote address as part of the Kuwait Public Policy Center’s Lecture Series at the General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning & Development in Kuwait. See: https://lnkd.in/esEVzzn. As the tensions grew and missiles were fired that downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8, I debated my flight to Kuwait, which neighbors Iran on the Persian Gulf. Ultimately, I made the trip via Cairo and spent an uneventful, but very enlightening, week in Kuwait. Upon my return we immediately had another crisis to deal with – whether or not the ICF Institute-organized ICF TOP7 event in Taoyuan, Taiwan would continue or not due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China.