Sunday, May 20, 2007

intelligent city

The Record announces that the Intelligent Community Forum announced that
Waterloo is the winner among seven finalists worldwide....

The top intelligent community is chosen by a combination of an international jury decision and a statistical breakdown of information about each community, compiled by a research firm.

Among the qualities judged are: how well connected the citizens are to the Internet, how well educated its workers are, how innovative and co-operative the community is, and how well it markets itself.

On all those counts, the city of Waterloo is "a tidal wave of a town," said Lou Zacharilla, director of development for the forum, a non-profit think-tank based in Manhattan....

He praised not only the research done at Waterloo's two universities and its high-technology organizations and businesses, but also the "magnificence" of its philanthropy, including the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

OTHER CONTENDERS

Ottawa-Gatineau
Headquarters of Canada's telecommunications industry.

Issy-les-Moulineaux, a suburb of Paris
89 per cent of its population uses the Internet daily, compared with a French average of 56 per cent.

Tallinn, Estonia
Started its technological journey by enabling its population to see Scandinavian broadcasts, which led to its embrace of Western values.

Gangnam District of Seoul, South Korea
Has numerous Internet kiosks, where citizens can apply for a building permit, or make a complaint about a restaurant's cleanliness.

Dundee and Sunderland, U.K.
Both applicants built high-tech infrastructures from the ashes of failed industrial economies based on shipbuilding, textiles and mining.

see: www.intelligentwaterloo.com

No comments: