The results are in: Montreal is the world’s smartest city
Photo by Jazmin Million (Flickr Creative Commons)
The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a global research think tank, has named Montreal the world’s top intelligent community of 2016.
“Our jury believed that Montreal played the innovation game at the highest possible level,” said ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla during the presentation ceremony last week in Columbus, Ohio.
“The city has found perhaps the strongest link and example of how to go from the revolution of technology to the new renaissance that we believe cities can enter.”
This year marked Montreal’s first appearance on ICF’s Top7 Intelligent Communities list, and only its second appearance on ICF’s Smart21 Communities list.
Robert Bell, one of ICF’s judges and co-founders, came to the city in April. For his visit, more than 125 partner organizations, including Concordia’s District 3 Innovation Center, collaborated to showcase all that Montreal has to offer.
“Thanks to our strong institutional partnerships and dynamic socio-entrepreneurial ecosystem, Greater Montreal rose to the top,” said Montreal mayor Denis Coderre.
In February, when the city made ICF’s Top7 list, the organization commended the urban region’s transition from an economy focused on heavy industry in the 1980s to a hub for the digital age, with more than 6,000 companies active in “information and communications technologies, aerospace, life sciences, health technologies and clean tech.”
ICF also gave prominence to Montreal's high number of graduates from post-secondary education. According to the think tank’s research, more than 415,000 students earned an undergraduate or graduate degree in the city between 1998 and 2008.
“This educational foundation feeds into the region’s fast-growing knowledge economy, which is a major focus of policy,” ICF stated in its assessment.
Additionally, the organization highlighted Montreal’s rich mix of private sector, public sector and social enterprise innovation.
“A large-scale innovation district studded with university campuses, incubators and accelerators fosters new companies and attracts the innovation units of established firms like Deloitte.”
Montreal is the fourth Canadian city to capture ICF’s top honour, and the first since Toronto won in 2014. Calgary, Alberta was named in 2002 and Waterloo, Ontario earned the top spot in 2007.
Find out more about Concordia’s District 3 Innovation Center.
