Arlington has been named one of the Top 7 Intelligent Communities in the world for 2014 by this Intelligent Community Forum, the second time they have received this honor.

Arlington is one of only two communities in the U.S. to achieve the Top 7 ranking.  Three communities in Canada and two from Taiwan also made the list that came out Thursday, January 23rd.  Columbus, Ohio, which also made the list in 2013,  is the other U.S. community that made the list.

According to the Arlington County press release, “Communities are evaluated based on five Intelligent Community Indicators, which provide the conceptual framework for understanding all of the factors that determine a community’s competitiveness and point to its success in the “broadband economy” – the Intelligent Community Forum’s term for globalization of the world economy.”

Some of the factors that contributed to the designation were Arlington’s construction of its own fiber-optic network, the “forward-looking planning”, highlighting the County creations of “high-density economic growth in the Metro corridors while preserving quiet residential neighborhoods and parks/open space.”  Other factors were the successful economic ecosystem and collaboration between government-business-university.