Tracking Urban Innovation in UK Cities

The project, which kicked-off today, was commissioned by the Future Cities Catapult, a London-based organisation established by Innovate UK to transform the UK’s capability in urban strategies, connected cities and urban data science.

“Our role will be to help the Catapult grow its knowledge of innovative projects, research and policy developments taking place across UK cities” explained Dr David Beeton, Managing Director at Urban Foresight. “This will build on our extensive network of contacts and knowledge of key developments in the future cities sector.”

The Future Cities Catapult’s work is focused on three core themes: promoting healthy cities, building resilience in urban infrastructure, and designing strategies to help cities adopt and finance smarter technologies. Urban Foresight’s expertise across all of these areas will therefore add significant value to this project.

The research undertaken by Urban Foresight will be synthesised into four quarterly reports over a period of 12 months. These will inform the Catapult’s internal business planning, provide intelligence to priority external stakeholders including the UK government and support knowledge sharing and market creation in the advanced urban services sector.

“The Catapult has identified that knowing what UK cities are doing, thinking and concerned about in relation to urban innovation is vital to informing opportunity development, expert analysis and stakeholder engagement activities” said Dr Beeton. “However, no such regular, coordinated view of trends, issues and opportunities exists in the UK. This work therefore offers great potential value to the Catapult, the government and individual cities across the UK.”

Image credit: Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0