The Smart Cities Challenge is run by Infrastructure Canada to encourage communities to use a smart cities approach to improving the lives of their residents.
Waterloo Region has been selected as a finalist for the $50 million prize for populations over 500,000.
The platform Waterloo Region put forward is to serve as a benchmark for Canadian youth and child wellbeing.
By using community-based data to compare local child and youth to UNICEF Canada’s Child and Youth Wellbeing Index, the goal is to increase overall inclusion in the region.
Other goals include improving digital literacy and mental health, increasing high school graduate retention.
Guelph and Wellington County has been selected as a finalist for the $10 million prize for populations under 500,000.
The platform looks at food as a system, and breaks it down into meaningful, attainable projects.
The challenge statement states, “Guelph/Wellington will become Canada’s first technology-enabled Circular Food Economy.”
The community aims to achieve this by increasing access to affordable and healthy food, turning waste into a resource and creating new business and economic revenues.
Calling the current system unsustainable, the platform aims to create a food-secure ecosystem.
Final proposals are due this winter, with the selection of winners announced in spring of 2019 by a panel of judges from across the country.
