Peterborough hosts National Event to share learnings around Future Cities

From one of the UK’s four Future City Demon­strat­ors to win­ning Smart City of the Year, Peter­bor­ough hos­ted an event for city lead­ers, aca­dem­ics and industry experts from across the UK to share this jour­ney, the suc­cess and the les­sons learnt.

‘Mak­ing Smart Cit­ies More Human’ was the title of a one-day con­fer­ence held at the Allia Future Busi­ness Centre, co-hos­ted by Innov­ate UK and Peter­bor­ough DNA, Peterborough’s Future Cit­ies pro­gram­me, delivered in part­ner­ship with Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough and Peter­bor­ough City Coun­cil.

Future City Pro­grammes have become increas­ingly pop­ular in some of the world’s lead­ing cit­ies to help under­stand and address the increas­ing com­plex­ity of city life and its man­age­ment. In the UK, Innov­ate UK launched the Future Cit­ies Demon­strat­or pro­gram­me and awar­ded Peter­bor­ough a £3mil­lion grant to dis­cov­er the value that could be delivered to a city through integ­rat­ing city ser­vices and sys­tems.

Show­cas­ing Peterborough’s cit­izen cent­ric approach, del­eg­ates heard about the pro­jects and ini­ti­at­ives that have been delivered in the three years since the pro­gram­me com­menced and the value added for busi­nesses, future skills and the city being named Smart City of the Year at the Smart City World Con­gress Awards at the Smart City Expo in Bar­celona in Novem­ber 2015.

Mov­ing for­ward bey­ond the Demon­strat­or, del­eg­ates heard about Peterborough’s Cir­cu­lar City and Digit­al City aspir­a­tions which also included ‘Ques­tion and Answer’ Pan­el Ses­sions with some of the lead­ing people in the respect­ive fields includ­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives from Great­er Lon­don Author­ity, For­um for the Future, Cran­field Uni­ver­sity and BGL Group.

Steve Bow­yer, Chief Exec­ut­ive of Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough and Pro­gram­me Dir­ect­or of Peter­bor­ough DNA, said; ‘Peter­bor­ough is really cre­at­ing a name for itself in the world of smart cit­ies, how­ever I’m often asked what exactly is a smart city and why is it rel­ev­ant to me? In a nut­shell it’s about con­nect­ing places, spaces, people and ser­vices in bet­ter and more intel­li­gent ways, embra­cing tech­no­logy as a way of achiev­ing great­er things.’