In 2011, the city of Ipswich published a 20-year economic development plan for its population of 195,000. It forecast the addition of 292,000 new residents, who will require an additional 120,000 jobs, and will live in a network of distinct communities interwoven with centers of employment, recreational facilities and green space. The plan responded to future challenges but also to past ones. Because Ipswich offered affordable housing and an attractive lifestyle, its population has grown rapidly in the booming economy of 21st Century Australia. Yet the decline of industrial employment in the 70s and 80s had left the city with legacy of long-term unemployment and bred unacceptable levels of crime and social dislocation.

Broadband Incentives

Ipswich has been quick to seize multiple opportunities to carry out the plan. The Australian government’s National Broadband Network (NBN), announced in 2009, opened the possibility of attracting significant investment into the region. Ipswich City Council partnered with surrounding city and regional councils to build a case for NBN rollout of what it termed the Western Corridor National Broadband Network. The governments mapped current and proposed broadband infrastructure, developed joint policies and solicited support from business and industry groups. Their work was rewarded in 2010, when NBN announced that two locations in the region would receive the first deployments of fiber to the premise. Work has progressed rapidly since then with over 39,000 premises now able to connect to the NBN fixed-line high-speed broadband network as of September 2017. Another nearly 34,000 premises are currently in build-commencement for FttN, FttDP, HFC, and Fixed Wireless connections. Ipswich is projected to have 100% city-wide connection by 2019.

A similar strategy has driven 3G and 4G mobile deployment. Governments combined to conduct independent testing of availability throughout the region, which sent testing vehicles across more than 2,300 kilometers of roads. The effort paid off by letting governments bring objective data to their negotiations with carriers about where towers should go to provide the broadest possible coverage. But Ipswich has been as ready to partner with the private sector as to pressure it. Acting as intermediary, Ipswich has coordinated between property developers and NBN to direct NBN investment in conduit to areas where property developers or the city are launching construction, which saves all parties time and money. The Ipswich City Council has simultaneously worked to raise awareness of the NBN deployment within the community by facilitating community education sessions, providing presentations to city stakeholder groups about the benefits and adding NBN construction impacts and rollout timings to Council e-newsletters, social media posts and advertisements. The city’s awareness campaign has already produced results with NBN’s latest report estimating that 51% of premises in Ipswich with NBN fiber connection have opted for the service, well over the state and national averages.

An Innovation Hub

Ipswich faces an unusual growth situation, having both the fastest growing population in Queensland and the youngest on average. This has put pressure on the City Council to ensure many new jobs are available when its young citizens join the workforce. Enter Fire Station 101.

Fire Station 101 is a hub for startups and innovators that provides education, mentoring and even potential funding. The hub has been open since March 2016 as a place where entrepreneurs come to build new ideas around digital technology. By raising the profile of entrepreneurship and innovation in the community, Ipswich aims to foster economic diversification while developing a skilled, knowledge-based workforce and jobs.

And it’s working. Fire Station 101 gained 50 member startups in its first six months of operation and has hosted over 150 startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses as of 2017.

In 2016, the hub began serving as home to Ipswich’s Application Studio. The Application Studio is a formal framework for city service experts, open data analysts, and innovators to collaborate in developing new city services and projects. In its first year, the program has brought in over $190,000 in new public-private funding of projects by the Ipswich City Council, the Queensland State Government, Ipswich and West Moreton Hospital, the University of Southern Queensland, Queensland Urban Utilities and Motor Trade Association Queensland. Due to this success, the Queensland State Government has allocated a further $500,000 for a new Application Studio initiative to build a schools-focused entrepreneurial program and a variety of accelerator programs.

The Ipswich Smart City Program

Building on its first twenty-year plan, the Ipswich City Council has created the Smart City Program. The program has adopted a human-centered design approach, focusing on the needs of citizens, local entrepreneurs, city workers and even tourists. The Smart City Program has three core goals: jobs, growth, and livability for Ipswich.

To meet the goal of jobs, the Council has extended Fire Station 101’s mandate to researching civic challenges in partnership with local industry and universities. Ipswich has also created a Digital Skills Initiative for all Ipswich residents, working with schools and adults in the community. The Digital Skills Initiative includes a wide range of digital skill and technology demonstration classes with many delivered for free in the city’s libraries and innovation hubs. Finally, the Council hosts the Build and Learn Fair, an event that encourages residents and visitors to build and showcase creations like robots and wood works. This event aims to give residents a hands-on experience of the new possibilities available in the Ipswich jobs market.

The City Council has adopted multiple green initiatives to help Ipswich sustain its current and future growth. These initiatives include Eco-Village Micro, a grid program with solar energy, batteries and energy trading technologies currently in development, and also a smart lighting program for the city with LEDs, sensors and data analytics for maximum efficiency. The Council is investigating converting some of its fleet to electric vehicles and is in the trials phase of autonomous public transport for the city.

As part of the Smart City Program, Ipswich has partnered with the Department of Transport and Main Roads to run the Cooperative and Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI), Australia’s largest cooperative intelligent transport system program. The initiative focuses on analyzing the safety and benefits of cooperative vehicles, publicly demonstrating the technology to increase awareness and adoption and increasing technological readiness for new vehicle innovations. CAVI’s eventual aim is to facilitate a dedicated study and trial of autonomous electric vehicles for public transport through partnerships between the public and private sector.

To enhance the livability of Ipswich as a city, the Council has adopted the Safe Precinct initiative: leveraging its city network to create a safe precinct via video analytics, smart lighting and noise detection. The Council has also helped to develop a healthy living lab with wearables and other technologies designed to capture real-time data about the health and activity of residents in order to better meet their needs. Perhaps most importantly of all, the Ipswich City Council has created new platforms for delivering its services online, making it easier for citizens to learn about and utilize all the city has to offer.

Beginning in 2015, Ipswich commenced a major redevelopment of its city center, where digital technologies will be used to attract commercial and residential tenants and to improve public safety through video monitoring, license plate and facial recognition software. Green standards will make the city center one of the most sustainable in Australia. When it is completed in 2031, it will mark the emergence of one of the nation’s model cities.

In the News
Read the latest updates about Ipswich.

Population: 204,004

Website: www.ipswich.qld.gov.au

Smart21 2011 | 2012 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018

Top7 2015 | 2017 | 2018

Gold Coast (a 2008 Smart21) is a regional city, under a single Council, grouping beach towns along 60km of coastline. Once an agricultural economy, it became a tourist haven only to see visits fall following September 11, 2001. Since then, Gold Coast has executed against an ambitious development strategy. A Broadening Broadband project succeeded in extending ADSL service to 80% of the city while planning has begun to develop an open-access FTTP network. The Pacific Innovation Corridor program seeks to build globally competitive businesses throughout the city while the Gold Coast Innovation Center incubates technology start-ups. The Gold Coast Knowledge Precinct is being developed to create, attract and support knowledge-based businesses throughout a 200-hectare area surrounding Griffith University.

Population: 509,000

Website: www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au

Smart21 2009

Located on Australia's eastern seaboard, Coffs Harbour is a tapestry of mountains, national parks, sandy beaches, quaint villages and marine reserves. Its natural bounty and busy regional airport have made it a highly desirable tourist and retirement destination. They have also granted Coffs Harbour less desirable gifts: a population that skews older than the Australian average and an economy dominated by healthcare, social assistance and seasonal accommodation, food services and retailing. As a result, the city has a markedly smaller proportion of high-income households and higher proportion of low-income households than the Australian average.

Planning Strategy

In 2009, the Council established a 2030 Strategic Plan, based on yearlong community consultation, to create a more vibrant future for this city on the sea. More than a decade earlier Nineties, Council made the decision to invest in a fiber-optic network to connect all governmental facilities. This proved persuasive to the national government, which named Coffs Harbour as one of 19 second-wave deployment zones for the National Broadband Network. Service to the first 2,600 homes was switched on in February of 2013.

To prepare Coffs Harbour for a broadband future, the community launched a Digital Enterprise program to train local businesses and institutions in digital technologies. It launched pilot programs in telemedicine, with a special focus on at-home care of seniors with chronic health issues. An Innovation Centre opened to provide office space, mentoring and incubation of new businesses, and the city focused on building working partnerships with its university and technical schools to engage students and graduates in local opportunity. It also launched art and cultural festivals that had the dual effect of strengthening the tourist economy while enriching quality of life. These steps are laying an impressive foundation for an economy that attracts and retains creative people and innovative organizations who will build a stronger future.

Population: 70,000

Website: www.coffs.com.au

Smart21 2014

The third-largest city in the state of Victoria, Ballarat once was a mineral and agricultural boom town, but global market changes decimated its economy in the 1990s and drove unemployment to nearly 20%. In response, city government, community leaders and the state collaborated on a long-term economic development plan focusing on attracting ICT companies, leveraging higher education and fostering digital inclusion. Today, Ballarat has the largest technology park in Australia, home to 30 companies employing 1,400 people. Broadband penetration, at only 53% of homes, is poised to accelerate through early roll-out of Australia’s National Broadband Network. Local ICT champions, working with the city’s universities, have helped spawn a wave of startups and research institutes. The community has also invested in its at-risk youth and indigenous population with specialized training in skills and digital literacy to equip them for success in the new economy.

Population: 95,000

Website: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au

Smart21 2013

Armidale, with its population of 25,000, was the first mainland city in Australia to be connected to the National Broadband Network (NBN) and experience the impact of fiber speeds to the premise. That was an impressive achievement for a small city 200 km inland from Australia’s east coast, home to the Intelligent Communities of the Coffs Harbour, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. Getting to that point required substantial planning, lobbying and the creation of community-wide collaboration. In 2011, Armidale formed the Digital Economy Implementation Group with representatives from city, state and Federal governments, local technology firms, the local university and technical school, the chamber of commerce and community ambassadors. Through community education and facilitation, the group helped NBN achieve an 80% connection rate to commercial and residential properties.

NBN has allowed Armidale to build a business community that might be expected of a much larger and more central place. It includes WhiteHack, a network security company; RMTek, a cloud services provider to industrial and mining facilities; Quadrant Australia, developer of special interest group travel programs; and Enertek, which brokers green energy solutions. The local school system and university Smart Farm are enthusiast adopters as well, because of high-speed broadband’s ability to bring to Armidale the best of what the world has to offer.

Preparing for a Digital Future

City leaders are determined that NBN make a major contribution to the local economy and quality of life. The city established a Digital Hub providing hands-on access to technology as well as free technology courses, technical advice and digital literacy training. A complementary Digital Enterprise program focused on the small-to-medium enterprise sector with workshops and customized training. More than 6,000 people have received training at the Digital Hub, and Digital Enterprise sessions have attracted 700 local business people. One company benefiting from the technology focus is ICT International. With the city’s help, it won a grant for business expansion and development of a new water-measuring technology that can estimate the total amount of water available in a watershed. The company is now exporting to 45 countries.

Engaging the Community

Community engagement is fundamental to the city’s progress. A community-owned composting system called City to Soil has diverted 60% of municipal waste from the landfill and produces high-quality compost that is sold back to the community. Residential take-up is high enough, at 75%, that Armidale has introduced a commercial version of the service. The city is also engaged in development of a 20-year master plan and invites community participation through a communications program called CREATE 2350. The program posts potential development projects to its Web site and invites comment and suggestions from residents. One example is a proposed A$50 million Airport Precinct Master Plan, which is the subject of online exchange and meetings with Council at locations around Armidale.

By 2035, Armidale will have been a fiber-based community for 20 years, and will be the Australian test case for how small cities in rural locations can build dynamic economies while preserving the quality of life their people treasure.

Population: 23,691

Website: www.armidale.info

Smart21 2016

The best acts of defiance are made in pursuit of a greater good. History is complete with tales of passive resistance, armed rebellions and legends of a person or group of dedicated souls who refuse to sell-out, cave-in or toss-down the towel, no matter how overwhelming the forces stacked against them or the depth of corruption from a perverse civil order. You and I honor the private inspirations in our lives who get us out of bed and roll us forward, somehow putting in us a deeper psychic mark and recalibrated moral settings. Those whose actions are given the stamp of the “heroic” or “visionary” after their time of persistence are seen to have been clearly on the right side of the cause, while most could only see through the glass darkly. They are, in the words of my father, not deliberate and intentional provocateurs, but people who simply “stuck by their guns.” At ICF we have 145 of them.

The Smart21 announcement is the first stage in ICF’s annual Intelligent Community Awards cycle. Based on Intelligent Community Index questionnaires submitted by communities large and small from around the world, ICF selects 21 finalists with the potential to become one of the Forum’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year. The Smart21 Communities of the Year® are announced at least 60 days before the selection of the Top7 and promoted to the world’s media by ICF and the communities involved. Gaining a place among the year’s Smart21 is considered a badge of honor as well as the first step greater recognition as an Intelligent Community positioned to prosper in the broadband economy.

Learn how ICF selects the honorees in its award program on our Awards Process page.

Smart21 of 2026

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ICF's Robert Bell interviews Marianne Archibald, Malcolm Inglis and Annette Main about Smart21 Intelligent Community Whanganui.

New York City and Dublin, Ohio, USA - 21 October 2015 – The Intelligent Community Forum today named the world’s Smart21 Communities of 2016. This select group of communities will now be in contention for the prestigious designation of Intelligent Community of the Year in June 2016.

Well, here we go: another Smart21 announcement day approaches, and a new group of communities – cities, towns and regions representing millions of people – will prove yet again that the future belongs to places that we may have once thought were extinct or in great danger of perishing.