(Honolulu, Hawaii & New York, New York, January 18, 2012) – The Intelligent Community Forum named its 2012 Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year today at a luncheon ceremony at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s annual conference (PTC’12) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (13:00 HAST, 18:00 EST, 23:00 GMT). The ICF’s Top Seven are communities that provide a model of economic and social development in the 21st Century using information and communications technology to power growth, address social challenges and preserve and promote culture. The Top Seven announcement is the second stage of ICF’s annual Intelligent Community of the Year awards cycle.
The Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year
The following communities, drawn from the Smart21 of 2012, were named to the Top Seven based on analysis of their nominations by a team of independent academic experts:
- Austin, Texas, USA. In the late Eighties, fourteen semiconductor manufacturers and the US government created a partnership called SEMATCH to solve common manufacturing problems. The selection of Austin as its headquarters sparked a technology boom. Growth was so robust for so long that the Austin economy began to look recession-proof—until the dot-com collapse of 2001 tripled the unemployment rate. In response, city government partnered with the Chamber of Commerce on a long-term economic development strategy that led to a nearly $6 billion increase in regional payrolls over five years. A second five-year plan launched in 2010 seeks to add another $11 billion. To address a workforce challenge, Austin has established a program that puts College Enrollment Managers into public schools to guide the choices made by students has helped boost the graduation rate for low-income students 14 percentage points to 75%. Oulu, Finland. Over the past 200 years, Oulu has seen industries come and go, from tar and
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