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FAIRFIELD – Fairfield and Jefferson County are becoming known around the world as a hub of innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability.

International organizations are taking notice, and one of them bestowed one of the highest honors possible on Fairfield by naming it one of the Top 7 Intelligent Communities of 2025. The honor was bestowed by the Intelligent Community Forum, which made the announcement on June 17 during an awards dinner in Madrid, Spain.

Fairfield and six other cities will now compete to be named the ICF’s Top Intelligent Community. According to the ICF’s website, the seven competitors are:

Assaí, Paraná, Brazil
Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, Türkiye (formerly Turkey)
Durham Region, Ontario, Canada
Fairfield/Jefferson County, Iowa, USA
Hilliard, Ohio, USA
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Las Rozas de Madrid, Spain

ICF Executive Director Matthew Owen wrote a paragraph on each city and why it was included in the Top 7 list. For Fairfield/Jefferson County, Owen noted that it had nearly six times more small businesses per 100 people than the average for U.S. cities. He mentioned its high percentage of households with broadband internet, MIU’s computer science department attracting global talent, Fairfield’s CoLab fostering start-ups, as well as achievements in solar power, child care and the arts.

Fairfield resident Bob Ferguson was the driving force in collecting information for Fairfield’s ICF application. Fairfield has entered this contest three years in a row, and all three years made the Smart21 group of semifinalists. Each year, Fairfield’s application was more sophisticated and more detailed than the last, and this year “our narrative really outdid itself,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson said that gathering the data on Fairfield’s economic development was a labor of love since it allowed him to explore the “creativity of our community and what makes us so interesting and unique among small, isolated communities.” He noted that Fairfield is even quite different from the other North American small city that made the Top 7, Hilliard, Ohio. That city is three times Fairfield’s size and is a suburb of Columbus.

“That’s very different from a town of 10,000 out on the prairie,” he said. “We’re not near a big city, so we have to create from scratch.”

Ferguson said he “collated” the information for Fairfield’s application, putting it all into a coherent narrative, but what he collated “was created by all of us.”

“This is really an honor that belongs collectively to all of us in the community, who in toto with our artistic, economic and social entrepreneurism, have created something recognized by scores on objective measures that place us in the Top 7 among 430 cities that compete in the first round of this.”

WHAT’S NEXT

Now that Fairfield has advanced to the final round, it’s time to get ready for the last push to win the competition. The seven finalists will gather in Vietnam Dec. 2-4 for their final presentation, and Ferguson hopes to take a nice contingent from Fairfield of perhaps half a dozen people representing private and public sectors.

But even before that final round in Southeast Asia, at least one of the founders of ICF will make a site visit to Fairfield this fall, probably in September or October. Ferguson said he really hopes Fairfield can put its best foot forward during this visit, and is one reason he’s taken such a keen interest in cleaning up the downtown.

If Fairfield is chosen as the top city, it’s really going to put the city on the map, as illustrated by previous ICF winners. Ferguson mentioned that Columbus, Ohio, was named the top city last year, and soon after that the city won a $40 million contract with a big business it was attempting to lure to town. Ferguson said he also thinks winning this recognition will instill pride in the residents of Fairfield and Jefferson County, and encourage them to keep thinking about improving their town and county.