Chiayi, Keelung, Tainan and Taoyuan, as well as Yilan County, were on Wednesday named among the world’s Smart21 Communities of the Year by the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum.
Also included on the list were seven communities from Canada, four from Australia and one each from Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Russia, the UK and the US.
The 21 finalists are to vie for a place in the Top7 Intelligent Communities of the Year in February next year, which leads up to the Intelligent Community of the Year award in June next year.
The Smart21 list is a group of cities, counties and rural communities that have applied digital tools to build local economies and societies so that they can prosper in an age of “digital disruption,” the forum’s Web site said.
Forum cofounder Louis Zacharilla said the inclusion of Moscow is a surprise, because the list rarely includes big cities with a global reputation.
“The Smart21 list always has a few surprises,” Zacharilla said. “This one definitely does.”
He also said that Taiwan, Canada and Australia have central governments that tend to work more closely with communities to unleash “the power of the local.”
“We find that it is the ones who collaborate with national or state governments, fly under the radar, and are ‘no name’ communities to most of the world that are most innovative and aggressive,” forum cofounder John Jung said.
“They are not afraid of new ideas and use strategies proven by intelligent communities around the world. They are places that the rest of the world can learn from and offer hope to people who are fighting hard to launch a new future and create early-stage investment opportunities to the outside world,” he added.
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