With thousands of jobs lost almost every day and everywhere in the current global economic turmoil, wouldn't it be utopia if a city could offer all the jobs its inhabitants wanted and still had plenty more to be filled? That would be even more amazing if the city was a densely populated municipality located in a country 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's exactly the current economic situation in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Issy), a suburb about 4 miles from Paris. Using information and communication technology (ICT) as a tool to successfully move its economy away from an old manufacturing base to a tech-savvy intelligent community, Issy has lured some of the most recognized technology companies. It's turning into the most technologically advanced city in France.
Since the mid-1990s, when the Internet was hardly prevalent across Europe, Issy successfully developed and implemented a proactive strategy of innovation to build a local information society that's open to all.
"[The strategy] was to follow the developments of new technologies benefiting the population across the country, without any exception," said Eric Legale, managing director of Issy Media, a public-private company in charge of communication and IT within Issy-les-Moulineaux.
The effort included launching a campaign to lure more communication and technology companies to the area and making high tech and innovation the backbone of Issy's economy, thereby accelerating the city's transformation.
A City Apart
There's nothing new about that strategy. After all, isn't that what all intelligent communities around the world have been doing for the past few years?
"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] 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," said Lou Zacharilla, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, the New York-based think tank that studies the economic and social development.
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 cards usually only meant SIM cards for mobile phones, schools in Issy introduced a smart card-based system that let students electronically pay for lunch. And Issy's City Council rebuilt its meeting room as a multimedia center the following year. In 1994, Santini asked city departments to study the development of the Internet in the U.S., and he created a steering committee to develop Issy's Local Information Plan.
Issy also was the first community in France to have Wi-Fi - there were hotspots in all buildings - as well as the first to have well developed broadband infrastructure.
"All that seems part of the regular practice today in intelligent communities, but it was very forward-looking back then," Zacharilla said.
To get a feeling of how forward-looking those initiatives were, consider that Netscape, the company that introduced the first widely used Web browser, was founded in 1994 and there were only 10,000 Web sites worldwide, compared to 80.6 million in 2006. The first e-commerce sites were also just coming online.
Early Outsourcer
Issy also did something that was hardly expected from a European community, especially a French community that consists of largely a union-oriented labor force: The city outsourced 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 accelerate 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," said Zacharilla, "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."
Clearly the impact of the almost two decades of transformation has been profound.
More than 80 percent of Issy's households are connected to broadband Internet (the average in France is 50 percent), while 98 percent of the city's citizens declare that within the past 10 years, ICT has fundamentally changed their daily life.
A 2006 study 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 a national 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," Legale said.
And there's more. Issy is France's most high-tech city and 57 percent of the companies are ICT-based, including marquee names like Cisco Systems Europe, France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Orange Internet, Sybase and Microsoft.
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.
Issy Stays Afloat
According to Legale, the effect of having that many technology and service-oriented companies - currently 843 companies - flocking to Issy has been energized in 2008 alone, while the world was in the midst of its worst recession in the past seven decades, 2,370 new jobs were created in Issy.
Besides, the city 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," Legale said.
Small wonder then that Issy is the center of global attention. Since being recognized as France's most advanced city a few years ago, Issy was chosen as one of the top seven intelligent communities again in 2009 (the first time was in 2006) by the Intelligent Community Forum. The city also was awarded the label of "living lab" by the European Network of Living Labs. A living lab is a new concept for research and development and innovation to advance the Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth in Europe, according to www.openlivinglabs.eu.
The city isn't sitting on its laurels. After creating a sustainable digital community where its citizens were able to master the technology tools of a nascent era, which allowed its people to be comfortable with the tools of the global economy, Issy is already moving toward what it calls Issy 2.0
According to Legale, Issy has begun transforming a 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, Legale said residents will enjoy living in intelligent and green (durable, healthy and environmentally friendly) homes.
"The digital fort will be exemplary in terms of high-tech, sustainable development and environmental protection, which will host 10,000 residences, a high school, businesses, a digital theater and much more," Legale said.
Additionally Issy is working on building an interactive 3-D user environment that, using the virtual community Second Life, will enable its residents to see photography exhibitions and the latest Issy TV programs, download publications or attend interactive City Council meetings.
"Issy has successfully transformed its economic base from traditional manufacturing to high value-added services," Legale said. "Today the city has become a national reference in regards to economic dynamism and its exemplary use of ICT."
