Rebooting the Digital City
Client: Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, part of the AHRC Creative Industries Clusters Programme
Digital Placemaking
Digital Cities
Edge computing
Bristol
Digital Inclusion
Thought leadership
April 2019 to Sept 2020
This thought leadership research mapped the history and development of Bristol as a Digital City - identifying significant milestones or ‘breadcrumbs’ that are recognised markers of the city’s journey over a 100 year period. The research also looked forward and examined whether the future internet might need to become local as well as global - embracing technologies such as edge computing to bring processing power closer to communities.
The Challenge
What we did
The Outcome
Digital placemaking is relatively new and looks at the intersection of digital and physical ‘layers’ within a locality. Developing greater understanding of the barriers and opportunities of Digital Placemaking can help enable radical inclusion as well new economic benefits.
Desk-top research into an emerging socio-tech opportunity
International engagement with experts from Taiwan, France, Brazil and Denmark
Public engagement and events
Depth-interviews with local digital leaders
Immersive rich-picture illustration of Bristol’s journey as a Smart, Digital City
Production of high quality thought leadership research report
The research was undertaken as a Fellowship with the Bristol+Bath Creative R+D programme. The Rebooting the Digital City report has been widely shared and presented locally, nationally and internationally, for example, at the Intelligent Community Forum in Canada. The main aim was to challenge existing thinking and raise new ideas but a practical response is also planned, via the Bristol Digital Futures Institute’s Nomadic Networking project, which we are supporting.
