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Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 

Digital technologies have the potential to unlock major social and economic change for the World’s rapidly growing urban populations, creating value through more liveable, healthy and environmentally sustainable cities. However, this can only happen if city leaders are empowered to make intelligent and informed strategic choices governing how digital systems are commissioned, installed and operated.  

This pilot study is investigating how collaboration between public authorities, private business and other city stakeholders could enhance the benefits of ‘smart’ digitally enabled infrastructure and other built assets for the benefit of urban populations. Core to the work is the learning from a live case study comprising the development of a 30-year digital strategy for Bristol, led by the City Council and framed around the concept of a ‘One City’ or ‘Whole City’ approach. The findings will be compared with the approaches followed by other leading UK and international ‘smart’ cities, and used to develop a framework of principles, processes and tools. This framework, and the learning established during this study, should allow other cities and towns to develop their own digital strategy, to plan the integration of smart technologies into the urban environment more efficiently and effectively, and following a needs- led approach, enhance the potential benefits for their citizens. 

Method

Case Study

Presentation at CDBB Week 2019

Next Steps

The next steps would be to develop toolsets to support digital planning into programme management and operational activities, and to investigate policy options around a new ‘digital social contract’ between the private sector, public authorities and citizens.

Project Status

This project was completed in 2019.