Welcome to one of the most exciting challenges and opportunities that the leaders of California’s communities will face in the years ahead—transforming your community into a “smart community” for the 21st century.

In the Smart Communities Guidebook, the introductory volume to this Implementation Guide, we tried to give you some idea of what a smart community is, what it does, and how becoming a smart community can benefit your region and your residents. We also emphasized that, while the new information technologies described there will play a critical role in the development of smart communities, the most important ingredient is people—people with a vision, people with a commitment to change, and people willing and eager to create productive collaborations within their communities.

In this volume, we will show you in detail how this can be done, and how you can prepare your people and your community to better deal with the increasing economic and social challenges that will confront you in the coming years.

The Guidebook and the Implementation Guide, however, are only the first steps in what both the State of California and the International Center for Communications intend to be a multi-year process of transforming California into a Statewide network of thriving “smart communities.” We recognize that each community has its own, unique circumstances and needs, and that no single template will serve all communities well.

And so, at the direction of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), we will be conducting a series of training seminars throughout the State during 1997 so that the most experienced smart community professionals can assist you in developing your community’s own smart community plan and can answer first-hand any questions that you might have. These seminars will build upon the very successful “Cities of the Future” conference that the International Center hosted in San Diego in December 1996 that launched the smart communities education effort.

Concurrently with the seminars, we will be establishing a smart communities consultation system in order to provide your community’s leaders with advice and counsel on an as-needed basis. And we will be developing a complementary package of informational resources, including a CD-ROM, a video presentation, and a regularly updated World Wide Web page, in order to provide you with the information you need—when you need it.

Finally, we believe that only through continued study of smart communities and smart community applications worldwide can we bring to California’s communities the very best information and procedures in this fast-changing field. And so we will shortly be establishing a Smart Communities Foundation to continue bringing the best people with the most diverse experiences together to work on what we truly believe will be the most important mission of California’s communities in the 21st century.

We thank you for your commitment to the “smart communities” concept, and we hope that, in the months and years ahead, we will be able to count your community as one of the most successful smart communities in the nation.

John M. Eger

Executive Director

International Center for Communications

San Diego State University

January, 1997