Carlsbad Named 'Top Digital City' In 2023 Digital Cities Survey

CARLSBAD, CA — The city of Carlsbad is known for its beautiful sandy beaches, lagoons, outstanding shopping and world-class sporting events, not to mention LEGOLAND and the Flower Fields of Carlsbad Ranch offering 50 acres of spectacular blooming flowers every spring.

While the awards keep rolling in for this popular beach bity, it now has one more reason to be a top spot for visitors and residents alike with its No. 1 ranking in the Center for Digital Government’s 2023 Digital Cities Survey.

Carlsbad announced its latest title in a news release saying, the awards recognize cities that improve residents’ lives through technology and leadership.

"This is the third year that Carlsbad placed in the top 10 cities with a population of 75,000-124,999," the news release said.

The award highlights the city’s use of technology to enhance the lives of all who live, work and play in Carlsbad by setting the standard for providing top quality, efficient local government services, the news release said.

The Connected Carlsbad innovation roadmap, which consists of more than two dozen projects, including the Implementing the Safer Streets Together Plan, expansion of the city's municipal fiber network and launching a real-time Fire Department operations intelligence system to reduce response times and support long-term planning, were cited as reasons the city was able to secure the top honor.

"Traffic also became high priority after a rise in collisions spurred the city to declare a state of emergency," a news release from Digital Government said. "Carlsbad embarked on a data-driven enforcement, education and redesign effort, including using analytics to pinpoint frequent collision sites, stats to track progress and public outreach platforms to encourage residents toward safer behaviors."

Digital Government said that the city's early-stage efforts produced a 40 percent quarter-over-quarter drop in injury-causing collisions.

"The city also built a shared high-speed municipal fiber network, saving on costs, improving bandwidth and laying groundwork for projects like a smart traffic light network," Digital Government said.

In total, 56 U.S. cities, including Carlsbad at No. 1 and Santa Monica at No. 10, were named as Top Digital cities in Center for Digital Government’s 2023 Digital Cities Survey for focusing their efforts on technology projects that impacted residents communitywide.

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