Some profound changes are happening in our city centres, and the pandemic is certainly playing a big part; activity and footfall in our shops, restaurants, and central business districts has plummeted in recent months.

Yet some of these changes have been rumbling away for years – and they go to the heart of how we think about, imagine and experience the places where we live, work, travel, shop and socialise. In this episode we'll be asking, "What now for our cities and city centres? And where might the opportunities lie for innovation and creativity and a new way of thinking about place?"

In this fourth episode of Connected Places, Professor Greg Clark speaks to Miguel Gamino, Executive Vice President at Mastercard about the future of the city itself. We'll also meet Dr. Julie Grail, a world renown expert in business improvement districts, urban governance and place-making, and the Managing Director of the BIDs Business.

Music on this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and Phill Ward Music (www.phillward.com)

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Show notes

Miguel Gamiño is Executive Vice President for Global Cities at Mastercard. Miguel leads Mastercard's global activities with cities and the City Possible platform, forming public-private partnerships that drive civic efficiency, inclusivity, equality and ultimately better quality of life. Prior to joining Mastercard, Miguel served as the Chief Technology Officer for New York City, San Francisco and El Paso, Texas.

Dr. Julie Grail is the Managing Director of the BIDs Business, a management consultancy specialising in Business Improvement Districts. She's also the former CEO of British BIDs, and she's a leading national and international commentator and expert on local business partnerships, urban governance and place management.

If you'd like to learn more about the work that Miguel and his colleagues at Mastercard are pioneering with City Possible – a new urban innovation model in which is creating a global network of cities, businesses, academics and communities – you can find out more here.

If you'd like to read the articles which Julie mentioned on the future of work and town centres, you can find out more at the BIDs Business where she regularly posts articles.

To learn more about what the Catapult is doing to support innovators and place leaders rise to the challenge of COVID-19, check out our Post-Pandemic Places Hub which explores the market opportunities the pandemic is creating or accelerating. If you found this episode on the future of public transport helpful.

The Catapult has also published a new report looking at the future actions and opportunities for innovators across 3 post-pandemic horizons: the immediate response, restarting the economy and the long-term economic recovery. To read and download the full report, click here.

To register for our next Third Thursday on the 17th September, where we'll be looking at the levelling-up lessons from Belfast, click here. To watch our recent Third Thursday webinar on Post-Pandemic Places, please click here.

To register your interest in our upcoming MK:5G Accelerator Programme and the work we are doing with businesses working on 5g technology solutions, please click here.

To register for our online Intellectual Property Masterclass that we're running for small and medium sized businesses on 16th September, click here.

To find out more about what we do at the Connected Places Catapult and to hear about the latest news, events and announcements – and please sign up to our newsletter!

Discussion points:

The future of cities & digitisation

• The experience of being a Chief Technology Officer in three US cities
• The ability of city government to execute and deliver with the private sector
• Developing an appreciation of public service
• Creating the City Possible learning community bringing together city leaders, innovators and academics from around the world
• Mobilising the private sector to develop high social impact solutions for cities
• The importance of city leaders and the public responding to new public health information
• The question of density and the pandemic and the management of scientific understanding
• People have left major cities around the world – how will they return?
• Second tier cities are well placed to compete with larger cities to offer higher quality of life
• Accelerating things that were already on the to do list, i.e. digitisation (contactless) is now a public health priority
• Next generation of urban technologies – autonomy, mobility and MaaS
• Shift to hyper digital - how to be effective and refocus on what's important
• Hybrid ways of living, working and travelling
• Avoiding economic segregation and inequality by design

The future of the town centre

• Heightened choice, mobility and disposable income has profoundly shaped our local places
• The power of online retail - traditional brands, new brands, Amazon, and the 'global anywhere' shop
• The town centre mix and diversity of offer has changed
• Overdevelopment of retail and food and beverage
• The impact of home-working on town centres and the future of work and changing commuting patterns
• The largest city centres are now the most vulnerable post-COVID
• The demographics of home-working and the implications for co-working in city centres
• The role of businesses in hearing the mood of local centres and working with innovators
• The importance of public sector partnerships and regulations and controls
• Using digital to enhance the shopping experience, online ordering and home design
• The development of omni-channel digital strategies for town centres
• Rebalancing the commercial element of the town centre for living communities
• The role of tactical urbanism and testbeds in innovating in town centres

As we gradually start getting back onto trains, buses, trams and tubes how will we get safely from A to B? What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for the future of mobility within and between places? And where might the opportunities lie for new innovations that could make these unprecedented disruptions more manageable?"

In this third episode of Connected Places, Professor Greg Clark speaks to TC Chew, a globally renowned transport expert who leads Arup's global rail business. We'll meet Ben Plowden, Director at Transport for London who's coordinating TfL's COVID-19 Restart & Recovery Programme. We'll also meet Nicolas LeGlatin, CEO of Open Space whose AI-enabled technology is helping rail operators monitor social distancing, and Alby Miller, Software Engineering Team Lead at the Catapult who's helping businesses like Open Space develop potentially game-changing innovations in mobility.

Music on this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and Phill Ward Music (www.phillward.com)

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Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts. Please also take a moment to write a review and rate us so that more people can hear about the podcast and what we do at Connected Places Catapult.

Show notes

TC Chew leads Arup's global rail business where he specialises in rail transit systems, including high speed rail, metros, light and heavy rail. TC oversaw the delivery of Asia's first fully automated underground heavy metro system in Singapore, several new railway lines on Hong Kong's MTR, and the London Underground Victoria Line upgrade.

Ben Plowden is the Coordination Director for Transport for London's COVID-19 Restart and Recovery Programme and has extensive experience of the workings of both national and local government. Ben overseas TfL's surface transport, the Mayor's air quality programme, and major projects including the Silvertown Tunnel, the Rotherhithe/Canary Wharf river crossing and the London Overground extension to Barking Riverside.

Nicolas LeGlatin is the CEO and Founder of Open Space; a company aiming to use digital twin technology to put people at the heart of the built environment. Nicolas is an experienced director who has worked in the architecture, engineering, construction and operations sectors. He specialises in developing and applying people modelling and simulation platform technology for the use of asset owners and operators.

Alby Miller is Software Development Team Lead at the Connected Places Catapult. With a background in aeronautical engineering, he specialises in visualization-based software systems built around 3D environments and immersive technologies. Alby has led projects as diverse as BIM model management and federation, the development of GIS platforms, mobile games and the creation of city-scale VR environments.

To learn more about Arup's insights, as well as the ideas and issues shaping the future of rail and mobility around the world, check out what they are doing on Transformative rail, Future of Rail 2050 and the Future of transport.

If you would like to know more about the collaboration between the Connected Places Catapult and the Open Space, you can read more here.

Transport for London has published a number of publications and reports about how it's responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, including briefings for a range of different businesses. For more information, click here.

To learn more about what the Catapult is doing to support innovators and place leaders rise to the challenge of COVID-19, check out our Post-Pandemic Places Hub which explores the market opportunities the pandemic is creating or accelerating. If you found this episode on the future of public transport helpful, then you can also learn more in our briefing on Post-Pandemic Mobility.

To register for our next Virtual Connections Café focussing on mobility on 9th September at 10am UK time, click here.

To register for a webinar on our HS2 Accelerator Programme being held on 10th September at 11am UK time, click here.

To find out more about a joint initiative that the Catapult is running with the Department for Transport's Future Aviation Security Solutions programme (S-TRIG) we're running a webinar on 7th September and 2pm where you can find out more information by registering here.

To register for our next Third Thursday on the 17th September, where we'll be looking at the levelling-up lessons from Belfast, click here.

If you're a company that's active in the mobility and transport sector and you're like to attend our next Virtual Connections Café on the 9th September, you can register here.

To watch our recent Third Thursday webinar on Post-Pandemic Places, please click here.

To find out more about what we do at the Connected Places Catapult, visit our website for the latest news, events and announcements – and please sign up to our newsletter!

Discussion points:

Total systems approach to rail and mobility

• Modelling and sensing data is being used by transport operators around the world to understand new modes of mobility
• Hygiene and public health guidelines have also had a significant impact on transport operations
• The SARS pandemic has positioned many east Asian cities to better respond to COVID
• The need for human connectivity is likely to mean that connectivity will not decrease in the long run
• Demand could be boosted by a demand for lower carbon travel
• The railway, including freight, will be key to achieving net zero carbon emissions
• The total systems approach to rail is not a revolution, but the evolution of rail within wider systems
• Investors are focussing beyond build phase to the entire lifecycle of the asset
• We have to think beyond rail when thinking about mobility – station arrangements, road facilities etc. working in harmony with other modes.
• Digital technologies allow us to understand our assets in a better way and to also enhance both our asset management and our operational performance
• Place making requires an open mind to adapt to external changes using intelligence and data
• Integrated thinking about the needs of a greater city area and the transport requirements are critical – and this requires leadership across business, industry and local government

Transport in London – COVID and beyond

• Mayor of London's transport strategy, London's mobility priorities and TfL's business plan
• TfL's restart and recovery and rebuild programme
• Restoring public trust and confidence in the public transport system
• Working with Boroughs, schools and communities across London
• The affect of COVID on different transport modes in London
• Avoiding a car-lead recovery
• Substantial reduction in transport authority income – closing the financial gap
• Reconfiguring the physical environment to enable social distancing
• Working with Boroughs to rethink the utilisation of public space, footways, cycle routes
• Predicting what will happen longer term is genuinely too difficult
• Innovation has two aspects: internal innovation within a transport authority, and enabling external innovation in the services they provide
• Mayor's Transport Strategy very much guides the kind of innovation that TfL encourages
• For many cities the goals are still the same are they were 6 months ago – cutting carbon emissions, achieving equitable growth etc. and innovators need to respond to that.
• Most world cities are now broadly pursuing the same goals around sustainable transport, energy and economy.
• Optimising resources of a city and utilisation of assets is critical for innovation – how can we optimises scarce resources?

How does innovation happen in places? What does it mean for a place to be an innovation location? And how important is place when we think about the wider innovation economy, especially in the economic aftermath of a global pandemic?

In this second episode of Connected Places, Professor Greg Clark speaks to Professor Peter Tyler from the University of Cambridge. We also meet Dr. Tim Moonan, Director of The Business of Cities – an urban research and intelligence group, and Dr. Amy Hochadel, Director of Global Business Growth at the Connected Places Catapult.

Music on this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and Phill Ward Music (www.phillward.com)

Follow the show!

Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts. Please also take a moment to write a review and rate us so that more people can hear about the podcast and what we do at Connected Places Catapult.

Show notes

Professor Peter Tyler is a professor in urban and regional economics at the University of Cambridge. Pete has been an expert advisor to the UK government, the European Commission, the OECD and UN Habitat, and he has written extensively on urban economies, the performance of cities, and the UK's industrial policy.

Dr. Tim Moonan is the Managing Director of The Business of Cities. He has advised more than 30 global cities and regions to help senior teams review their strategies, leadership and policies. He has co-authored more than 50 reports and books on city competitiveness, governance and performance and he teaches executive-level education for international companies and universities.

Dr. Amy Hochadel is the Director of Global Business Growth at the Connected Places Catapult. She works with local leaders, entrepreneurs, city and national governments around the world, including the Gulf states, South East Asia, India, Africa, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the USA.

To download a copy of the Logic of Innovation Locations report, co-authored by the Connected Places Catapult and The Business of Cities, click here.

To read more about how the Catapult worked with the Emirate of Sharjah, and to also download the Sharjah Champion Toolkit for innovation locations, click here.

To register for our next Third Thursday on the 17th September, where we'll be looking at the levelling-up lessons from Belfast, click here.

If you're a company that's active in the mobility and transport sector and you're like to attend our next Virtual Connections Café on the 9th September, you can register here.

To watch our recent Third Thursday webinar on Post-Pandemic Places, please click here.

To find out more about what we do at the Connected Places Catapult, visit our website for the latest news, events and announcements – and please sign up to our newsletter!

Discussion points

The role of place in the innovation economy

• Places need to understand their competitive advantages and connectivity across a region or a country is vital for the innovation economy.
• COVID-19 is unlikely to fundamentally change the need for clustering in the innovation economy.
• Productivity variations are not just between sectors, but within sectors and businesses.
• Businesses need to be able to access innovation and new ways of working
• Timing is crucial for the levelling-up agenda, particularly for businesses and places beyond the South East of the UK.
• Local industrial strategies are critical in keeping businesses in play, while also becoming more innovative.
• It's more than just a north-south divide in the UK. Most British cities have been affected by this, but northern cities have a chance to catch up.
• Levelling up requires both resources and fundamental institutional change.
• The convergence of ICT, bio-science and nano-science are one particularly strong area for the UK
• The UK needs to be develop a much stronger interface between busines, industry and local leadership. Devolution is critical to this and the UK could learn a lot from the German model.
• The four critical factors in innovation economies are businesses, investors, knowledge institutions and places themselves. Innovation happens best and the boundaries of these.
• Places make it possible for the interactions that create business success "to be in the air".

Understanding innovation locations

• Places need to audit their advantages and opportunities – are they attracting innovation from beyond, or growing it internally?
• Creating the right physical and institutional structures that connect businesses and information is critical
• Enabling the right relationships to develop between people is also vital
• Understanding the unique attributes of places is critical for policy makers
• There are long corridors that can become focusses of innovation in some places, but in others it can be individual streets and city blocks
• Tailoring scale, location and the fabric of place to innovation requirements is vital
• The economic recovery will require us to rethink the city centre
• Mitigating downside risks, protecting key systems and promoting human health
• Working more cohesively at the regional level will be crucial for place leaders
• 2nd and 3rd tiers cities will need to position themselves more boldly and have the opportunity to make great strides; Greater Manchester, Toulouse, Lyon, Hamburg and Munich are ones to watch.
• Small cities (200-500k size) have an opportunity to become more global in their innovation economies
• We're likely to see more of a merge between the science and creative sectors in the innovation economy
• Logistics is also a huge opportunity for innovation within cities, particularly the 'last mile' element.
• Understanding the 'personality' of locations has been critical to the Catapult's understanding of innovation around the world: assets and infrastructure, business environment, vision and leadership.
• It's also important to understand different types of locations and where they are at in their journey: this is critical for a convening organisation like the Catapult, when connecting companies and innovators with the right locations.

Where is the digitisation of the planning system taking us? What skills will the planner of the future need? And how is COVID-19 changing how we think about the places where we live, work and travel?

In this first – extended – episode of Connected Places, Professor Greg Clark speaks to the most recent Chief Planner for England, Steve Quartermain CBE as well as the Chief Planner for Singapore, Hwang Yu-Ning.

We also meet Darshana Chauhan, Founder of Coplug, a UK company specialising in social infrastructure demand management, and Nissa Shahid, Senior Urbanist and Chartered Planner at the Connected Places Catapult.

Music on this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions and Phill Ward Music (www.phillward.com)

***SHOW NOTES***

Steve Quartermain CBE recently stepped down as Chief Planner at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government after 12 years in the role. His career in local government has included Epping Forrest, Dartford and Yorkshire and he has also served as President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).

Hwang Yu-Ning is the Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Planner at the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore. Yu-Ning has also held senior positions in Singapore's National Ministry of Development and the Prime Minister's Office. She also serves as governing trustees on the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and co-chairs ULI Singapore's Women's Leadership Initiative.

Darshana Gothi Chauhan is founder of Coplug, a qualified architect and urban designer with a specialisation in spatial data analytics, digital frameworks, that citizen-centred design. She is also the founder of DesTech - a competition that brings together creative thinking and digital innovation in the built environment, with an outreach in over 200 colleges and universities across South Asia.

Nissa Shahid is a Senior Urbanist at the Connected Places Catapult, and a Chartered Planner, where she specialises in spatial data, GIS applications, planning policy and strategy development. She has worked across the private and third sectors and played a key role in the Catapult's early work on PlanTech.

For more information about the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's proposals to reform the planning system, click here.

If you would like to get involved with the Catapult's PlanTech Challenge, click here for more information about the scheme, the benefits to participating local authorities and contact details.

We also mentioned the shared vision and principles of the future of planning that we developed with the RTPI. You can read more here about the vision and its underpinning principles.

To watch our recent Third Thursday webinar on Post-Pandemic Places, please click here.

To find out more about what we do at the Connected Places Catapult, visit our website for the latest news, events and announcements. And please sign up to our newsletter!

Welcome to Connected Places!

In season 1 we'll be trying to understand what a post-COVID world means for our towns and cities, housing, real estate, planning, transport systems, and innovation economies. Join Professor Greg Clark as he speaks to leaders from around the world about the places of tomorrow.

Music on this episode is by Phill Ward Music (www.phillward.com)