The Intelligent Community

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Karl Grossman, Journalist, Host of the Enviro Close-Up TV program and Professor of Journalism at SUNY at Old Westbury. They discuss the changing landscape of journalism, particularly at the local level, and what may be in store for news reporting in the future.

Karl Grossman has specialized in doing investigative reporting in a variety of media for more than 50 years. He teaches as well as practices journalism. He is a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York Old Westbury, where his courses include Investigative Reporting and also Environmental Journalism. He began teaching at SUNY Old Westbury in 1978. For over 32 years, he has hosted the nationally aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman syndicated by Free Speech TV and broadcast in 40 states. He is the author of seven books, including Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, Power Crazy, The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet and Weapons in Space. He is active in doing investigative reporting on the Internet, writing regularly on CounterPunch, NationofChange and OpEd News. And he writes for the local press on Long Island. His weekly column appears in newspapers on Long Island including The Southampton Press, The East Hampton Press, The Shelter Island Reporter, The Sag Harbor Express, Community Journal, the South Shore Press and on Long Island news websites including Smithtown Matters. Honors he has received for journalism include the George Polk, Generoso Pope, James Aronson, Leo Goodman and John Peter Zenger Awards. His articles have also appeared in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, The Baltimore Sun, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Progressive, The Orlando Sentinel, Village Voice, Common Cause Magazine, In These Times, The Montreal Mirror, The Boston Phoenix, Space News, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, The Globe and Mail and The Miami Herald.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks further with José Roberto Lagunes Trejo, Research and Strategy Lead at Mexico City's Fundación Hogares. They discuss trust and how a social index the Fundación has created is helping repair the social fabric in Mexican communities.

José Roberto Lagunes Trejo is an architect and urban designer from Veracruz, Mexico, who works on the intersection between urban design practice and community development. Since 2018, he has worked in Fundación Hogares, a non-profit organization based in Mexico City that promotes participation in social housing territories. Their projects strive for building capacity in communities so that citizens become agents in co-designing strategies for the transformation of their environment. Aside from his work within the foundation, José Roberto teaches Architectural Design and Urban Sociology at Anahuac University Mexico and is an experienced speaker at national and international conferences. He participated in the Urban Future Young Leaders programme in 2022, in Helsingborg, Sweden, and is one of the founding members of the Young Leaders Academy, a value-driven education and consulting collective created for the next generation of change-makers that hosted its first educational programme this June in Stuttgart, Germany. He considers himself a life enthusiast and is interested in reducing inequalities through his work towards a more sustainable future for all.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with José Roberto Lagunes Trejo, Research and Strategy Lead at Mexico City's Fundación Hogares. They discuss the method used by José Roberto's organization to reinvigorate rundown neighborhoods and build trust among citizens in places where mistrust and fear have become embedded.

José Roberto Lagunes Trejo is an architect and urban designer from Veracruz, Mexico, who works on the intersection between urban design practice and community development. Since 2018, he has worked in Fundación Hogares, a non-profit organization based in Mexico City that promotes participation in social housing territories. Their projects strive for building capacity in communities so that citizens become agents in co-designing strategies for the transformation of their environment. Aside from his work within the foundation, José Roberto teaches Architectural Design and Urban Sociology at Anahuac University Mexico and is an experienced speaker at national and international conferences. He participated in the Urban Future Young Leaders programme in 2022, in Helsingborg, Sweden, and is one of the founding members of the Young Leaders Academy, a value-driven education and consulting collective created for the next generation of change-makers that hosted its first educational programme this June in Stuttgart, Germany. He considers himself a life enthusiast and is interested in reducing inequalities through his work towards a more sustainable future for all.

When you watch ICF's videos on Youtube, what you see publicly are representatives from a city celebrating when their city is named Intelligent Community of the Year. Sometimes, as in the case of the mayor of Espoo, Finland, you see tears of joy. Sometimes, you see Eindhoven representatives from The Netherlands donning red shirts in celebration or Columbus representatives from Ohio storming the stage behind their mayor like a football club.

What you do not see is the incredibly hard work done by a group of people from around the world to analyze the information from these cities, assess it and judge them for you, the world's media and other aspiring places. They are the ICF Analysts and Jurors, the heart and soul – and the brains – of the ICF Awards program.

In Part 2 of this podcast series, ICF co-founder Lou Zacharilla speaks further with 6 of them to collect their memories, thoughts and advice for cities around the world as ICF heads toward naming a successor to New Taipei City as the 2023 Intelligent Community of the Year next week.

You'll hear from:

• Moez Chaabouni, Managing Partner and Chief Revenue Officer at Summit Technologies LLC and Chair of the ICF Jury
• Bill Coleman, Owner of Community Technology Advisors
• Professor Shirley Fenton, Research Associate, CSG at the University of Waterloo, VP of the National Institutes of Health Informatics and Co-Founder of Waterloo MedTech
• Dr. Jay Edwin Gillette, Professor Emeritus of Information and Communication Sciences and Senior Research Fellow at Ball State University's Center for Information and Communication Sciences
• Dr. Norman Jacknis, Professor of Practice, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University and ICF Senior Fellow
• Gordon Kennedy, Director at Clearbluewater 2.0 Ltd.

When you watch ICF's videos on Youtube, what you see publicly are representatives from a city celebrating when their city is named Intelligent Community of the Year. Sometimes, as in the case of the mayor of Espoo, Finland, you see tears of joy. Sometimes, you see Eindhoven, The Netherlands representatives donning red shirts in celebration or Columbus, Ohio representatives storming the stage behind their mayor like a football club.

What you do not see is the incredibly hard work done by a group of people from around the world to analyze the information from these cities, assess it and judge them for you, the world's media and other aspiring places. They are the ICF Analysts and Jurors, the heart and soul – and the brains – of the ICF Awards program.

In this podcast, ICF co-founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with some of them to collect their memories, thoughts and advice for cities around the world as ICF heads toward naming a successor to New Taipei City as the 2023 Intelligent Community of the Year this October.

You'll hear from:

• Moez Chaabouni, Managing Partner and Chief Revenue Officer at Summit Technologies LLC and Chair of the ICF Jury
• Bill Coleman, Owner of Community Technology Advisors
• Professor Shirley Fenton, Research Associate, CSG at the University of Waterloo, VP of the National Institutes of Health Informatics and Co-Founder of Waterloo MedTech
• Dr. Jay Edwin Gillette, Professor Emeritus of Information and Communication Sciences and Senior Research Fellow at Ball State University's Center for Information and Communication Sciences
• Dr. Norman Jacknis, Professor of Practice, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University and ICF Senior Fellow
• Gordon Kennedy, Director at Clearbluewater 2.0 Ltd.

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In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Idoia Postigo, Director General at Bilbao Metropoli-30. Idoia shares the story of how Bilbao recovered from industrial decline and revitalized itself into a city that won the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize in 2010.

Since the inception of the Association for the Revitalization of Metropolitan Bilbao (Bilbao Metropoli-30) in 1991, Idoia Postigo has been responsible for promoting and disseminating the revitalization plan and implementing its strategic actions. Making use of her 30 years of international experience in urban planning strategies, Idoia's work has positioned the Association at the center of the metropolis' urban development and an influencer of all the main actors responsible for it, especially public institutions and citizens. Idoia's influence spans widely, as an active member of many local boards, societies and networks, including the Advisory Council of the Urban Agenda at Euskadi-Bultzatu 2050, the Bilbao-Bizkaia Action Group, and the Bilbao Port Community UNIPORT. She is also a published author, graduate in political sciences, international relations, psychology and organizational behaviour and – seeing interpersonal relationships as fundamental in her field – a teacher in training modules for Emotional Intelligence, Social Skills, Team Management and Motivation.

In part 2, Chairman and CEO of Toronto's Institute Without Boundaries and now the Brookfield Sustainability Institute Luigi Ferrara talks about sustainability, why we are far away from it and what Brookfield is going to do to move it into the consciousness of communities.

Luigi Ferrara, Dean, Centre for Arts, Design and Information Technology, leads program development, partnerships and innovation centres that provide students with challenging and exciting real-world learning opportunities and position George Brown College as a key player on the global stage.

Luigi has also served as the Director of the Institute Without Boundaries, an academic program and studio aimed at solving real-world problems through design research and strategy with goals of social, ecological, and economic innovation. This has now been transformed into the Brookfield Sustainability Institute.

Luigi is the inaugural Chair and CEO of the Brookfield Sustainability Institute, a centre of excellence that will be housed at Limberlost Place, George Brown College's net-zero carbon emissions mass-timber building that is set to open at Waterfront Campus in 2024. The Institute will focus on aligning the processes of digital transformation and sustainability for the benefit of communities everywhere, becoming a beacon for 'smart sustainability'.

Luigi has devoted his career to advocating and practicing interdisciplinary design both in Canada and internationally, working on the relationship between architecture, urban design, sustainability, digital transformation, strategy, and design thinking. He continues to take on professional design projects every year and lends his expertise to several boards and associations while showcasing his talent and knowledge through exhibitions, publications, and lectures.

Luigi Ferrara is a graduate with distinction in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto. He worked for the internationally recognized firm Stirling/Wilford Associates, and locally with Peter Turner Architects, Paul Reuber Architect and Russocki/Zawadzki Architects. Luigi is an Honorary Member of the Association of Chartered Industrial Designers of Ontario and a former president and current senator of the World Design Organization (formerly the International Council of the Societies of Industrial Design), the UN-recognized NGO for Design (formerly the International Council of the Societies of Industrial Design). Luigi is also the Chair of the Board for the McLuhan Foundation on Media Literacy.

Chairman and CEO of Toronto's Institute Without Boundaries and now the Brookfield Sustainability Institute Luigi Ferrara dives deep into how cities are being rebuilt and redesigned for sustainability and why Europe and Asia lead North American communities in this important area.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF co-founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Craig Taylor, best-selling author of Londoners and, most recently, New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time. To tell the story of New York City post-9/11 and COVID, Craig lived in New York City for over 5 years and immersed himself in the city's extraordinary soup. New Yorkers is a series of interviews with 200 people from every class, race and corner of the city. Craig came away amazed at The Big Apple and says, "A New York life well lived is an accomplishment like no other."

Craig Taylor is a Canadian-born author of four books: New Yorkers, Londoners, One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and Return to Akenfield. He has written multiple reviews for the New York Times Book Review and also serves as an editor for Five Dials, a magazine published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books. Five Dials features new fiction, poetry, illustrations, reportage, long interviews, very short interviews, dispatches from London and abroad, ads, ads that don't look like ads, and archival work culled from the Hamish Hamilton backlist and, sometimes, the deep Penguin archives. You can learn more about Craig and his work at https://craigdtaylor.com.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF co-founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Krista Nightengale, Executive Director at the Better Block Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to showing communities how to build a more walkable, bikeable, liveable neighborhood to improve quality of life and attract talent.

Krista Nightengale is the Executive Director of the Better Block Foundation. She began her career at the city magazine in Dallas where she served as Managing Editor, Executive Director of a leadership group aimed at empowering citizens to take action, and Executive Director of a literacy nonprofit that united the city in reading together. She then served as Chief of Staff of the Coalition for a New Dallas, an advocacy organization aimed at reconnecting neighborhoods. Krista then helped launch Dallas Innovates, a news site that promotes Dallas-Fort Worth as a hub of innovation. While covering the city, Krista became intrigued by the built environment. She joined the Better Block Foundation to help with its growth, spread its story, and make the world a little better by showing communities how wonderful walkable/bikeable districts are. So far, she has worked with 75 cities around the world.

Krista was named to the Dallas Business Journal's 40 Under 40 2022, is an AIA Dallas and TxA Honorary Member, a graduate of 2016 Leadership Texas and was a core team member working with United Way on #GivingTuesday. She writes pieces for various outlets including D Magazine, the Dallas Morning News, Dallas Innovates, and others. She is appointed to the Comprehensive Land Use Plan Committee for Dallas, is a steering committee member for Big D Reads 2022, board member of Philanthropy Kids, past president of the Dallas Center for Architecture, former AIA board member, City Lab High School Foundation board member, a member of the Communities Foundation of Texas Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy, a former TEDxSMU steering committee member, former Dallas Police Department Community Advisory Board, former executive board member of the New Leaders Council, and former member of the Dallas Commission on Homelessness. She often appears as a panelist or moderator discussing urban design, politics, housing issues, and activism. She was named to DCEO's 500 in 2022 and 2023.