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.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla talks with Ema Hsieh about the upcoming Top7 Announcement in Taoyuan, Taiwan in February. Then, we go to last year's Summit to learn more about Taoyuan, the 2019 Intelligent Community of the Year.

As cities and regions continue to grow, one of its key economic and city-building drivers will be “airport cities”, known as an aerotropolis. These are massive projects that bring together major free trade zones and logistics activities. They also often bring together air, rail and road connectivity making them very desirable locations for businesses and for high-value products and related light-weight manufacturing and assembly activities that can be efficiently shipped by air cargo. But these airport cities or aerotropolis developments can also bring together other aspects of city building, such as entertainment, restaurants, markets and educational facilities. As a virtual city, it will also be filled with people who may wish to reside in or near an exciting aerotropolis requiring places for everyday shopping, culture and health-related facilities.

The price of freedom in any culture, society or community ultimately comes down to the cost of people being able to make the right choice for themselves and for future generations.

A Supreme Court justice once said that, while the USA’s Constitution was inspired, it did not come with a guarantee that people and places would automatically prosper. It ensured that the people, of whom the government was for, would be protected to make any choice they sought best.

“If people want to go to Hell, I will help them,” he added. “It’s my job.”

At ICF we turned that phrase around by declaring that, “If places want to prosper and get on the path to prosperity and stability, we will show them a method for doing it.”

But it can be Hell to get there.

TAOYUAN, Taiwan, July 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Gogoro®, a technology leader transforming how innovation is accelerating the shift to sustainable urban mobility, today announced GoShare®, the first fully integrated mobility sharing platform and solution designed and operated as a single platform that provides a key strategic component to smart city ecosystems. 

"Cities around the world have proven consumer demand for mobility sharing but few have established a business model or deployed a solution that demonstrates ongoing viability because of the operational inefficiencies in refueling and redeployment of shared vehicles," said Horace Luke, founder, and CEO of Gogoro. "GoShare is the first end-to-end mobility sharing platform, and tightly integrates the Gogoro Network, Gogoro Smartscooter, and GoShare App into a powerful solution that eliminates many of the operational challenges to deliver an optimized platform that is easy for riders to use, more sustainable to operate and more viable for cities to meet their aggressive smart city goals and initiatives."

(June 13, 2019 – New York City) – For the first time in six years, the Intelligent Community Forum honored a Taiwanese city with its top award tonight when it named Taoyuan, Taiwan as its 2019 Intelligent Community of the Year. Taoyuan is a well-known veteran of the Intelligent Community Awards program, having been previously named a ten-time Smart21 Community and a four-time Top7 Community since first entering the program in 2009.

“Taoyuan has been one of the highest overall achievers among smart and Intelligent Communities for the past decade,” said ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla. “They have stayed with it and while most people may not recognize the name Taoyuan City, it is at the same level as Stockholm, Toronto and Melbourne. It is a place where quality of life, job creation and the digital environment’s ability to unleash innovation meet in perfect unison.”

Taoyuan was selected as the 2019 Intelligent Community of the Year after a year-long evaluation that included a quantitative analysis of extensive data, site inspections by an Intelligent Community Forum co-founder and votes from an international jury made up of experts from around the world. Communities in the Awards program are evaluated based on the six Intelligent Community Indictors that make up the ICF Method and in the context of ICF’s annual theme, When Tech Giants Come to Town.

ICF Director of Operations Matthew Owen sits down with ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell to discuss three of 2018's Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year: Chiayi City, Taiwan; Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Taoyuan, Taiwan.

(New York– 8 February 2018) – The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018 today.  This is the think tank’s 16^th annual Top7 list of regions, cities or towns that have gone, in ICF’s words, “from Smart City to Intelligent Community.”  This year’s list includes communities from four nations, with Taiwan contributing three, Canada two communities and Australia and Finland one each. The seven will travel to London in June where one will go on to be named the Intelligent Community of the Year, succeeding Melbourne, Australia, the reigning community.  The announcement will take place as the culminating event at the ICF Global Summit from 4-6 June at Siemens’ Crystal Facility and other sites around London. (www.icfsummit.com)

The Intelligent Community Forum announced its list of the Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year. The 15th annual Top7 list includes communities from four nations, with Australia, Canada and Taiwan each contributing two, and Russia contributing a seventh community in a first-time achievement for that nation.