The Rise of Intelligent Communities

So very much is at stake as we build, rebuild and design homes and communities for the generation ahead.  The need for a more “intelligent” community is logical because we quite simply need a place that provides us with the economic, social and emotional stability to realize our full human potential.  The challenge of blending the right technological and social investments are daunting to communities, yet the opportunities are endless for those who get it right.

As I write this column on the dawn of the Intelligent Community and the impact of the “Broadband,” I am seeing that dawn in the nation of Australia.  It is summer here, and not only are communities like Whittlesea, Melbourne and Brisbane warm this week, so is the political climate around them.  It is in fact white hot because of things which normally remain hidden to the majority of people in community:, infrastructure items including fiber optics and ICT. 

Australian communities, not unlike those from Sweden to America to Asia, are in the midst of determining their future.  Broadband and ICT are at the heart of the matter and central to the outcome.  This comes as no surprise to the people in Stockholm, who claim the world’s leading digital economy and broadband penetration and are well along in their transformation.  However, Stockholmers, who received the 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year prize, may be surprised to see many communities and countries still attempting to determine the merits of broadband and ICT.  Stockholm, thanks to Stokab and a strong sense of the community’s future, long ago made its decision to ensure the proper amount of access, understanding that low-cost, ubiquitous access was the key.  So did other communities, which today are called “intelligent communities.”

While Stokab was the key idea in thinking behind the new and most important infrastructure in Stockholm, Australia’s vehicle for this historic transformation is a new national broadband network.  The decision is controversial.  It is a decision by the national government to build a $43B (AUS) national broadband network which, it is hoped, will propel the nation toward the21st Century and allow it to realize the same economic and social benefits that Stockholm, Suwon, South Korea; Dundee, Scotland; Issy-les-Moulineaux, France and Waterloo, Canada are enjoying as they thrive and create jobs.  It too ultimately borrows from Stokab’s open access notion.  How the network will ultimately perform, and its access costs, has yet to be determined. 

If Australia, like other communities, follows Stockholm it is following a winner.  Sweden’s digital economy ranking speaks for itself.  In a series of speeches I have given in Australia citing Stockholm as the “nexis of broadband and intelligent community possibilities,” I refer to the qualitative and quantitative factors that propelled Stockholm through the ICF’s annual international awards program and landed them on the stage of Steiner Film Studios in New York where it received the 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year award. Those factors included both quantitative and qualitative elements.  Of interest to me was the fact that over 90% of the people in Stockholm believe it is a good place to live and will actually get better.  Being named the first European Green Capital, setting a goal to be fossil fuel free by 2050 and a range of initiatives give citizens of Stockholm a sense of place, pride and the secure knowledge that their lives, too, will offer the possibility to be constantly “refreshed.”

Louis A. Zacharilla – Co-Founder Intelligent Community Forum