GOV.UK
Our Urban Living team has been funding and supporting the creation of smart and future cities throughout the UK. As urbanisation increases, it is clear that UK cities need to innovate and work together to create more sustainable, better connected, more secure, healthier, more efficient and cleaner cities.
Future cities UK: Investing in better places to live, work and play
Our cities are vibrant places to live, play and work yet they aren't always the easiest places to live. Urban growth has created problems in areas such as:
- transport
- housing
- health
- energy
- pollution
Innovate UK challenged 30 cities to show how they could work with local businesses and partners to improve urban living and working using new technologies.
This is the story of the cities that took part in the Future Cities UK project and it shows how £1.5 million helped them attract more than £100 million of private investment for future projects.
The cities featured in the report include
- Bristol http://www.connectingbristol.org/
- Leeds and Bradford http://leedsdatamill.org/
- Milton Keynes http://www.mksmart.org/
- Glasgow: the overall competition winner http://futurecity.glasgow.gov.uk/
Re-imagining the UK high street - boosting retail jobs and the UK retail sector
Innovate UK has invested £5 million in the ‘Re-imagining the High Street’ SBRI competition. Its aim is to regenerate the high street by exploring innovative approaches to retailing and logistics.
Innovate UK has awarded £1 million each to 3 British technology companies in this retail competition.
The aim of the competition was to find solutions to the challenges facing the UK high street including:
- the rise of online shopping which increased by 14.7% in July 2015 compared to the same month in 2014
- rising town centre vacancy rates
Learn more
- Hear about the Urban Living team's recent involvement in Bristol's Festival of the Future City
- Learn more about the work of our Urban Living programme
- Read Richard Miller's blog on Why cities matter
- Learn about the Urban Living Partnership that we are running with all seven Research Councils
- Read about the Future Cities Demonstrators we are organising with city authorities
- Meet UrbanMinded: a company we supported whose products solve urban challenges
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