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Government invites proposals for ‘city of tomorrow’

The Government has invited cities across the UK to compete for £24m to demonstrate how they could integrate transport, communications and other city infrastructure to increase quality of life, boost the local economy and reduce impact on the environment.

Funding from the Government’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, will be awarded to the city or urban area in the UK that submits the best proposal for large scale ‘future cities demonstrator.’

The Future Cities Demonstrator programme invites local governments and authorities to bid for one of 20, £50,000 grants to carry out a feasibility study to develop their demonstrator project proposal.

Cities that have completed the feasibility study will then be invited to submit a proposal for the large scale demonstrator, and one successful city will be awarded £24m funding to implement their proposal.

Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said: “People and technology are developing and changing all the time, and we can’t expect our cities to stand still while that is happening.

“Cities face major challenges such as changes in population and demographics, congestion, waste and pressure on resources and services.

“This underlines the need for our future cities to have high-quality, integrated infrastructure to meet these challenges.

“There is great potential for Britain to lead the way in this area and that’s why this programme is so important. I’m looking forward to hearing about the bids which cities put forward and seeing what the city of the future may look like.”

The competition is for cities or equivalent local authorities responsible for an urban area with at least 125,000 residents.

The project will enable businesses to test, in practice, new solutions for connecting and integrating individual city systems, and will allow 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.

Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, added: “In the future there will be a large market for innovative approaches to delivering efficient, attractive and resilient cities.

“We have world-leading companies in areas such as project management, engineering, architecture, energy and transport systems, communications and the digital economy.

“The UK has a world-class science and research base that supports the development of innovative solutions and provides a talent pool for UK and global firms, so we are well-positioned to exploit the growing market.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .