“It’s not enough to have the technology. You have to ask how it will make a difference to people’s lives.”
Bristol Is Open CEO, Julie Snell
The purpose of this series is to explore individual cities, identify their particularly pressing challenges and examine how they are using technological innovation to manage them.
In this edition, we focus on Bristol.
Bristol’s vision is to become an ‘open, programmable city’. With connected city infrastructure, companies can test applications and experiment in a real-world environment.
Through Bristol Is Open, the smart city delivery programme and a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol, the city is tackling challenges such as economic inequality, congestion and housing affordability.
Bristol’s approach is focused on ensuring that the best ideas are commercially realised – and sharing those findings with cities around the world. By becoming a leading test bed for the commercialisation of smart city ideas, Bristol is garnering international attention, and attracting more collaborators, both in the private and public sectors.
In 2017, Bristol was named the UK’s smartest city by Huawei and Navigant Consulting. Now, as Bristol Is Open’s pilot phase comes to an end, there is a greater drive to understand what the community wants from technology and scale the work up even further.
Download this report to find out: