Bristol City Council has won £50,000 funding from the Government-backed Technology Strategy Board to look at ways of boosting the local economy and is now in with a chance of securing £24m to set up a large-scale ‘Future City Demonstrator’.
As more and more people live in cities there is increasing demand on city systems – things like transport, energy, water and health. The Future Cities Demonstrator will show how a city’s multiple systems – transport, communications and other infrastructure – could be integrated and how challenges in the city could be addressed, improving the local economy, increasing quality of life and reducing impact on the environment.
As the population of cities continues to rapidly increase the challenges include tackling increased congestion, dealing with the health and care needs of an increasingly ageing population and creating energy systems that are smarter and more resilient to climate change. The opportunity is to be more innovative, more efficient and to create more high tech businesses and jobs.
Cabinet member for communities cllr Guy Poultney said: “This award is great news for the city. Bristol has the fastest-growing population of any of the UK’s core cities. We also have a great deal of local business expertise in ICT, micro-electronics, creative digital media and green technologies. This funding will help the city to understand how we can future proof our systems and at the same time support high tech businesses and create jobs.”
Stephen Hilton, the council’s director of futures, added: “The competition for the £24m funding will be very fierce but Bristol has a good chance. Our Future City project is a real team effort with strong support from both the city universities, businesses and partners such as HP Labs, Toshiba Labs, Arup, IBM, Accenture, Western Power Distribution, Watershed and Knowle West Media Centre. If we get this right we will create new jobs not just for Bristol but for the UK as a whole.”
The £50,000 funding will be used to deliver a Future City Feasibility Study called Connect Bristol. The study will inform Bristol’s bid to Government, which will be submitted in mid-November. Bristol is in competition with 29 other cities and urban areas for the £24m funding.
The Swindon-based Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy
Through its Future Cities Demonstrator competition, the Technology Strategy Board will invest up to £25m in a large-scale demonstrator for future cities. The project will demonstrate at scale, and in use, the additional value that can be created by integrating city systems. The project will enable businesses to test, in practice, new solutions for connecting and integrating city systems, and will allow UK cities to explore new approaches to delivering a good local economy and excellent quality of life, whilst reducing the environmental footprint and increasing resilience to environmental change.
In the first part of the competition, 30 grants of £50,000 have been awarded to cities and urban areas to carry out a feasibility study and develop their demonstrator project proposal. In the second stage, cities will complete their feasibility study report and can also submit a proposal for the large-scale demonstrator. Up to £24m is available for the project and the successful applicant will be announced in January 2013.
