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(Honolulu, Hawaii & New York, New York, January 19, 2011) � The Intelligent Community Forum named its 2011 Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year today at a luncheon ceremony at the Pacific Telecommunications Council�s annual conference (PTC�11) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (13:30 HAST, 18:30 EST, 23:30 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.

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The Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year
The following communities, drawn from the Smart21 of 2011, were named to the Top Seven based on analysis of their nominations by a team of independent academic experts:

• Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.  In 1969, the US government cited Chattanooga as the city with America�s dirtiest air.  In response, the City Council joined with local companies and physicians to create a pollution control board that led to $10m in private-sector air-quality investments. When heavy manufacturing declined in the 70�s and 80�s, the same spirit of partnership and the support of local foundations led to a decade of transformative downtown revitalization projects.  To spark economic revival the business, academic and governmental leadership pressed forward on multiple fronts, such as higher standards for secondary education with integrated career training.  The city-owned electric utility built a fiber network that will collect billions of data points and provide real-time management that will significantly boost the grid�s reliability and performance.
• Dublin, Ohio, USA.  In Dublin, the average resident is between 35 and 45 years of age and eighty percent have a university degree.  A strategic planning exercise led Dublin (a 2010 Top Seven community) to install underground conduits to encourage fiber-optic deployment.  This became DubLink, a public-private fiber network for business, government and schools, which spurred aggressive roll-out of e-government services from digital filing of taxes to Dublin TV online video channels.  An all-Dublin wireless network has extended coverage to provide cost-saving service automation to the city and a platform for service providers to reach customers.  Dublin also uses the availability of dark fiber to attract employers like OhioHealth and the Online Computer Library Center, and drives innovation in partnership with a nonprofit that has accelerated the growth of 50 local companies.  The surge of entrepreneurship has created an economy in which, despite a number of very large companies, the average Dublin business employs just seven people.
• Eindhoven, Netherlands.  Eindhoven (a 2009 and 2010 Top Seven community) is a metro area containing the cities of Eindhoven, Helmond and Veldhoven, which has long been the industrial heart of the Netherlands.  Recent decades have not been kind to manufacturing in developed nations, but Eindhoven has kept its edge through a model public-private program called �Brainport.�   This has turned the region into an open innovation platform.  Executing a strategy approved by its member organizations, Brainport works to identify their strengths, weaknesses, needs and gaps, then develops joint projects using ICT to meet social challenges, sharpen citizen skills and business competitiveness, and create business opportunities that keep the income in the region.  This consistent effort has added 55,000 jobs to the economy in the past 10 years, lowered unemployment below the Dutch average in most years, nearly quadrupled high-tech start-ups since 2000, and helped the region weather the financial crisis.
• Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.  Issy-les-Moulineaux (a 2005, 2007 and 2009 Top Seven community) became the industrial zone of Paris in the 20th Century only to suffer de-industrialization in the post-war years.  Beginning in 1980, a visionary mayor determined to make his city home to innovative, ICT-based companies employing a high-quality, knowledge-based workforce. 
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