About the session
Cities are the concentrations of the UK’s population, trade, commerce, cultural and social life. They are places of opportunity and provides the sites where national policy objectives either succeed or fail. It is therefore essential to systematically explore not only how cities are shaping their own future, but also how they shape that of the wider national system of cities. UK cities today are transitioning into a new era. Central government is vesting new powers to city regions through a range of bespoke City, Growth and Devolution Deals, and decision-makers across all administrative tiers are thus increasingly faced with new opportunities and challenges. In order to make positive and resilient decisions for the long-term development of our cities, they require robust evidence and science of the nature of interrelated drivers of change at play. Over the past two years, the Government Office for Science has been running a Foresight project to develop the evidence base available on the trends and influences most likely to shape the future of UK cities. The ‘Future of Cities’ project has looked across a 50 year time horizon towards 2065 and explored how people might live, work and prosper in these future cities. This talk will present some of the key emergent findings of the major drivers, opportunities and city policy ideas uncovered so far.
