The Sharing City

Intelligent Community Case Studies for Sharing Solutions to Common Challenges

At the October 25, 2018 SMART21 Announcement in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, ICF Canada organizers added a twist to this year’s event. A Community Roundtable was created to provide an opportunity for SMART21 Canadian communities selected in previous years to showcase their cities, towns and regions; to tell their stories; and to explain how over the years their communities have been impacted with their transformation efforts to become Smart Communities. In the course of a fast-paced afternoon, a dozen communities shared their stories, their challenges and their solutions; several identified common challenges such as meeting their community’s mobility needs and facing climate change with their sustainability policies; and many communities shared their challenges and solutions to attract and retain talent for their innovative businesses. They each spoke to what made their communities smart and intelligent. Some, like Sarnia-Lambton, indicated that the SMART21 process had been pivotal in helping their community focus their transformation efforts in becoming a smart city and intelligent community.

The Community Roundtable was kicked off with a presentation by host city, Hamilton, Ontario, a 2018 TOP7 Intelligent Community. Others included a Small Community Keynote Case Study delivered by Stratford Mayor, Dan Mathieson, a 2013 Top7 Intelligent Community. His community in Southwestern Ontario is a leader in innovation utilizing city-owned resources that propelled their community into becoming a globally recognized innovation hub. In addition to its municipally owned broadband and WiFi services, the community collaborated with the University of Waterloo to develop its Digital Media campus in Stratford, strengthening its hold on the city as a leader in content, talent and entertainment along with the Stratford Shakespearean Festival and as a testbed for global innovations. Other case studies included presentations from Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, Sarnia-Lambton, Windsor-Essex, Surrey, Kingston, Burlington and Grey County, Ontario. At the close of the Community Roundtable, ICF Co-Founders Louis Zacharilla and John G. Jung were joined by Andrea McKinney, Hamilton’s CIO and Clearcable’s Founder, Rob McCann, to discuss what they heard from these case studies. These case studies were an excellent opportunity for benchmarking and offered significant examples for aspiring communities in Canada and elsewhere to learn from and potentially apply the lessons from these communities to their own communities. The panelists agreed that these specific solutions cannot be copied, but much can be learned from the approach taken, learning what the pitfalls were and how best to potentially apply what the learnings from the solution were. It was also an excellent opportunity for networking and for private sector vendors to connect with area municipalities. We received some welcome and very positive responses to delivering these case studies. Some people suggested a need to hear from more and international examples at our next similar event. Another, Silicon Halton’s Chris Herbert, wrote a tweet that summarized the event: “this is what makes ICF THE organization to be involved with when it comes to Smart Cities. Case study after case study! Sharing lessons learned with each other! Awesomeness! intelligent communities! (Source: https://siliconhalton.com/blog/chris-weekly-journal-for-oct-14-to-oct-27-18 )

Following the Community Roundtable, ICF’s Lou Zacharilla, announced the SMART21 Intelligent Communities for 2019 at a reception hosted by Calix Networks, along with Juno Award winning recording artist, Terra Lightfoot, who closed the session at the Studio in the Hamilton Convention Centre. The press release from the announcement can be found here.