With thousands of jobs lost almost everyday and almost everywhere in the current global economic turmoil, wouldn't it be Utopia if a city could offer all the jobs its inhabitants can take; and still have plenty more to be filled? More so when the city is one of the most densely populated municipalities in the region, and that too in a country that is as much affected by the global turmoil as any other developed nation.
With almost 70,000 jobs on offer for a population of a little more than 60,000 inhabitants, that is exactly the current economic situation in Issy-les-Moulineaux [Issy], a booming commune in the southwestern suburbs about 4 miles from Paris, France. Using ICT as a tool to successfully move its economy away from an old manufacturing base to a technology savvy intelligent community, Issy has lured some of the most recognized technology companies to not only locate more jobs there than it has inhabitants, but to also turn into the most advanced city in France.
Ever since the mid 1990s, when the Internet was hardly prevalent throughout Europe, Issy has successfully developed and implemented a proactive strategy of innovation to build a local Information Society which is open to all.
The strategy adopted, says Eric Legale, managing director of Issy Média, a public-private company in charge of the communication and the information technologies within the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux, "was to follow the developments of new technologies benefiting the population across the country, without any exception."
It included launching a campaign to lure more communication and technology companies into the area and to make high-tech and innovation the backbone of Issy's economy, thereby accelerating the transformation of the city.
Nothing new about that though. After all isn't that the strategy all Intelligent Communities around the world have been following for the past few years?
"Yet what sets Issy apart from all other Intelligent Communities is the fact that the process of intelligent community development actually began as far back as the late 1980s when [Issy's maverick] mayor Andre Santini decided at the dawn of the digital age to begin to adapt the ICT tools to both municipal IT management and also for economic development," says Lou Zacharilla, co-founder of The Intelligent Community Forum, the New York-based think tank that studies the economic and social development of the 21st Century community.
Under Santini's administration, Issy was the first French city to introduce outdoor electronic information displays and the first to deploy a cable network. In 1993, while smart card was still just SIM cards for mobile phones the world over, schools in Issy introduced a smart card-based system that allowed the students to pay for lunch electronically. And Issy's City Council rebuilt its meeting room as a multimedia center the following year. That year as well, Santini also asked city departments to study the development of the Internet in the US and he created a steering committee to develop Issy's "Local Information Plan."
Issy was also the first community in France to have Wi-Fi; there were Wi-Fi hotspots in all buildings, as well as being the first to have the most well- developed broadband infrastructure,
"All that seems part of the regular practice today in Intelligent Communities, but it was very forward looking back then," say Zacharilla.
To get a feeling of how forward-looking those initiatives were consider these; Netscape, the company that would introduce the first widely-used Web browser, was founded in 1994 and there were only 10,000 Web sites worldwide then, compared with 80.6 million in 2006. The first e-commerce sites were also just coming online.
Issy also did some thing that was hardly expected from a European community, or, at least the French community-that
consists of largely a union oriented labor force. The city decided to outsource its entire IT infrastructure to Euriware, a 10-year-old Paris company that was one of France's first outsourcing firms. The goal was to speed up the pace of technology innovation in the community, and Santini promoted it as the first step in transforming Issy into a "digital city."
"Looking back, to outsource ICT management and infrastructure functions of a municipality in a part of Europe that is largely considered union oriented, was almost a dangerous thing to do," says Zacharilla.
Clearly, the impact of the almost two decades of transformation into a digital society has been profound.
More than 80 percent of Issy's households are connected to broadband Internet (the average in France is 50%), while 98 percent of the city's citizens declare that ICT, within the past 10 years, has fundamentally changed their daily life.
A study released in 2006 showed that Issy's population is much more computer-savvy than an average French citizen with 89 percent of the locals logging on to the Internet daily, compared to country average of 56 percent.
"ICT and innovation have contributed significantly to building a new society where citizens are better informed and more involved in decision making," says Legale.
And there's more. Issy is today France's most hi-tech city where 57 percent of the companies are ICT-based, which include marquee names like Cisco Systems Europe, France Telecom, Hewlett Packard, Orange Internet, Sybase, and Microsoft to name but a few.
Issy is also the country's media hub with one-third of the land-based digital TV channels-like the Marie Claire Group, Mondadori, Arte, BFM, Canal+, Eurosport, France 5, Globecast, and France 24- establishing their headquarters there.
According to Legale, the rub-off effect of having that many technology and service-oriented companies -- currently a total of 843 companies -- flocking to Issy has been that in 2008 alone, while the world was in midst of its worst recession in the last seven decades, 2,370 new jobs were created in the city.
Besides Issy can boast of "a new economy, where improved response times and availability [of services, infrastructure and manpower have] enabled today's start-up [companies] to [hope to] become the leaders of tomorrow," says Legale.
Small wonder then, Issy is now at the center of global attention. Having been recognized as France's most advanced city a few years back, Issy was chosen as one of the top 7 Intelligent Communities again (the first time was in 2006) in 2009 by The Intelligent Community Forum. The city was also just was awarded the "precious" label of a "Living Lab" by the "European Network of Living Labs (www.openlivinglabs.eu), which is a new concept for R&D and innovation to boost the Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth in Europe.
But the city isn't sitting on its laurels. Having already created a sustainable digital community where its citizens were able to master the technology tools of a very young ICT era, which then allowed its people to be comfortable with the tools of the global economy, Issy is already moving towards what it calls Issy2.0
According to Legale, Issy has embarked upon a process to "creating a Living Lab within the Living Lab" by transforming an old 19th century fortress into a digital fort. "Le Fort Numérique" will not only be a place to live, but will also have a laboratory for ideas and reflections on the intelligent use of ICT within an environment of open innovation. By 2012, claims Legale, residents will enjoy living in intelligent and green (durable, healthy, and environmentally friendly) homes.
"The digital fort will be exemplary in terms of hi-tech, sustainable development and environmental protection, which will host 10,000 residences, a high school, businesses, a digital theater, and many more," says Legale.
Additionally, Issy is currently working on building an interactive 3D user environment, that, using Second Life, will enable its residents to see photography exhibitions, latest programs of Issy TV, download publications, or attend the interactive city council meetings.
"Issy has successfully transformed its economic base from traditional manufacturing to high value-added services," says Legale. "Today, the city has become a national reference as regards its economic dynamism and its exemplary use of ICT."
Indrajit Basu is the International Correspondent for Digital Communities.
Photo PotironLight. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic
