Response to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smart Cities call for evidence
Last year the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smart Cities launched a call for evidence for a UK Government Strategy on Smart Cities. YoUrban responded.
We would welcome UK Government support in this sector; not for the sake of another plan or strategy that sits on the shelf, but to provide a road map of what UK Government will do to make it easier for, and accelerate the work of, local authorities, businesses, civil society and academic institutions in this field. Perhaps instead of a strategy, there needs to be a UK Government smart city action plan that complements the Industrial Strategy?
Questions in the call for evidence revolved around the challenges, opportunities and what UK Government can do to overcome / seize these; how to support local decision making; and the role of UK Government in domestic and international trade.
With our tech start-up hat on, we have outlined three main points from our responses:
1. Foster an Innovative approach to public procurement: There is an opportunity to reform how public procurement is done in regards to smart cities. Involving start-ups and SME’s early on, being more agile, collaborative, and more accessible. Exeter City Futures are a good example with their accelerator programme that brings start-ups, local authorities and citizens together.
2. Domestic growth: There needs to be new UK policies (and encouragement for local authorities to create new policies) that support smart city development; particularly around commitments to developing and supporting start-ups and SMEs in this field, but also where new businesses are held back by regulation (whilst balancing the rights of citizens of course). Local authorities are cash strapped however. There needs to be encouragement (and support) for these local bodies to create policies and perhaps have innovation / smart cities as a theme for infrastructure funding through a number of mechanisms. Rules on a proportion of central infrastructure funding could also be relaxed so it can be spent on contracts that develop our virtual infrastructure and networks.
3. Exports: Brexit presents an opportunity to trade with the rest of the world where cities are growing rapidly (particularly India, China and Southeast Asia), but it also presents a significant threat to smart city exports; especially as a proportion of potential exports will be services. UK businesses have worked closely with many EU cities and invested in these relationships. There is a risk that we loose high-level influence and leads; for example, access to the EU-China partnership on smart cities and urbanisation. Bristol and Manchester are good examples; they are both lead cities in the flagship Horizon 2020 Programme Smart Cities and Communities (check out REPLICATE, Triangulum; also see London’s Sharing Cities), and are also part of the EU-China partnership on smart cities. We need to make sure we are still involved in these initiatives in the future.
These are just some of our thoughts. Huge opportunities await but the UK needs a joined up approach; time to scale the experiments.
Luke Loveridge is the Co-founder and CEO of YoUrban.