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The past six weeks have been a whirlwind, focused on u-, e-, m-, and i-communities and their economic and social revitalization around the world. Our Intelligent Community and urban revitalization activities at Waterfront Toronto (www.waterfrontoronto.ca) have kept me busier than usual as we worked to finalize the contract for the advanced ultra broadband infrastructure. But everyone also plans their pre-summer wrap up meetings in May and June and that introduced plenty of travel into my schedule.

First was the New York based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF)’s annual conference with its announcement of the Intelligent Community of the Year – Stockholm – and other awards, which you can see at www.intelligentcommunity.org. I was honored to participate again this year as a member of the international jury that reviewed the information for the Final Seven and then ranked their submissions to determine the winner.

Next up was a trip to Seoul, South Korea to participate in Cisco’s Connected Urban Development (CUD) meeting and to visit the Inchon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), a very large and impressive initiative. During my visit we agreed to work on developing a collaborative relationship between Waterfront Toronto and IFEZ. The CUD is Cisco’s investment in the Clinton Global Initiative to study how ICT can help to reduce the carbon footprint of cities. It too is an impressive initiative involving projects in seven cities: San Francisco, Seoul, Amsterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Hamburg and Birmingham.

At the end of June, I was in Ottawa assisting Professor Tony Bailetti of Carleton University in his “Lead to Win” initiative to help small start-up companies refine their business plans as part of a larger job creation initiative in Ottawa. Professor Bailetti has developed some well respected concepts for Open Innovation and Waterfront Toronto is looking forward to adopting many of the concepts and to introducing Lead to Win in Toronto.

The theme of this year’s ICF conference was “Building the Broadband Economy” and I was pleased to speak and unveil i-COA®, the Five Layer Intelligent Community Open Architecture® model. The purpose of this architecture is to provide a framework for community leaders who wish to create the world’s leading Intelligent Communities. Anyone can use the model and we hope it will be treated like an open source product with others adding to it to share with the world. It is registered by Hutchison Management International to maintain editorial integrity as it evolves but is available at no cost for anyone to use. I encourage everyone’s feedback – check the Contact Us page to discuss it with me.

Jane Jacobs would have loved i-COA, as she argued in her ground breaking 1961 book The Death and Life of the Great American Cities that cities are living organisms and architects from Ebenezer Howard with his 19th century Garden Cities to Le Corbusier have all made the mistake of only addressing part of the equation for a great city. They have tended to focus on the architecture and other physical attributes like street layouts, but Jacobs argued that they missed the elements that create the heart and soul of the really great and livable neighborhoods and cities. This is one of the challenges faced by Dubai – lots of architecture but missing the soul. We developed i-COA to help explain the difference between an iconic architectural initiative and a true community building initiative after my visit to Dubai last November.

Figure 1 below shows the five layers of i-COA®. Layer 3, the Collaboration Ecosystem, is what I call the Jacob’s Layer … updated with some of Richard Florida’s Creative Class. Jacobs and Florida both argue for the importance of the soul of the great community.

Figure 2 adds the Accelerators. They have a big impact on the rate and nature of economic and social development of the community. Coincidentally, the communities that have won the Intelligent Community of the Year over the past 15 years have all implemented most of the elements of i-COA. More will be said of the characteristics and details of the various layers in i-COA in the coming weeks.

* ”i-COA” and “The Intelligent Community Open Architecture” are registered trademarks of Hutchison Management International.

Jane Jacobs had it right when she wrote her ground breaking 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She lamented the many failed attempts at city planning by a host of planners from Ebenezer Howard and his English Garden Cities in the late 19th century through Le Corbusier’s Radiant Cities in the 1920’s.  Concepts from both of these planners and their many disciples continued through much of the 20th century.

Jacobs’ primary concern was that cities are really living organisms and cannot be modeled or planned in just one or two dimensions, particularly from just an architectural or physical layout perspective.  I was struck by the correctness of her ideas when I compared many world cities to Dubai while visiting there to give a speech last November. My Dubai observations and feedback from friends and relatives who live there is that iconic architecture is interesting but it alone does not create a livable, “comfortable” city with practical neighborhoods. Much more is required.

The issue is how to plan for the complete community, particularly with our new opportunities for “e-everything” including new forms of virtual collaboration and benefits from e-health and other social applications made possible by new ultra broadband infrastructures.

Later this week I am speaking in New York at the annual conference of the Intelligent Community Forum,  www.intelligentcommunity.org where the Intelligent Community of the Year will also be announced from a list of the Final 7 that was selected in March.  Previous winners include Gangnam, South Korea, Taipei, Glasgow, Singapore and Waterloo, home of the Blackberry® in Canada.  At the ICF conference I will present  “i-COA®”, the Intelligent Community Open Architecture five layer model that I hope will provide a framework for all to use and develop as they move forward with their city planning.  Like the OSI Seven Layer Model for Telecommunications i-COA should evolve into a useful planning framework that would be approved by Jane Jacobs and others concerned with the need for an integrated approach to creating the 21st century intelligent cities of the future. I will describe i-COA in more detail in my next blog update.