Learning from Newcastle City Futures
What lessons can be learned from the successful Newcastle City Futures project?
What lessons can be learned from the successful Newcastle City Futures project?
Newcastle City Futures (NCF) was established in 2014 by Newcastle University as a collaborative platform to bring together Research and Development potential with long term policy trends and business needs in the city.
In 2015, the City Council established the City Futures Development Group (CFDG) comprising local authorities, universities, the LEP and private sector to think long term about the city’s prospects and research needs. The CFDG reports to the Science City Partnership Board but aims to identify growth opportunities, multi-partner and multi-sector projects, public and business engagement on city futures, and new research projects.
NCF was part funded in 2014-15 by the Government Office for Science Future of Cities Foresight Project, led by Sir Mark Walport and Sir Alan Wilson; its long-term report, Newcastle City Futures 2065, was published in July 2015 identifying evidence and priority themes, and set out the case for Newcastle to be seen as a test-bed city for innovation.
In 2016, NCF became a £1.2m Research Councils UK/Innovate UK Urban Living Partnership (ULP) pilot project (one of only five nationally) that aims to address the future needs of Newcastle and Gateshead through the collaborative design of projects that can be delivered across the city region.
The key themes of the ULP were engagement, visualisation and digital enablement.
While it was one of a number of ULPs, the Newcastle project was a unique one according to Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Director of Newcastle City Futures and Professor of Town Planning at Newcastle University. He said: “This was an unorthodox research project, focusing on outward partnerships and systems thinking, but was a true pilot – the first ever research project that was jointly owned by all seven research councils and Innovate UK, the first to require multi-disciplinary and multi-sector working under the ethos of co-production, and the first to target a specific place.
“We not only had to find ways to link together neighbouring academies, Newcastle University and Northumbria University, but also two neighbouring local authorities, Newcastle City Council and Gateshead Council, set within a region that is known to have its occasional internal rivalry.”
The idea of collaborative working extended to an extensive list of business partners too. “Over the two years of the project, NCF developed its ULP partnerships from 20 to over 180 organisations: 80 per cent of the partners are businesses,” says Tewdwr-Jones. “But, critically, the NCF team also committed a considerable amount of time to develop a spirit of partnership and trust across sectors, to encourage joint working and platforms for the creation of innovative ideas and developments. That spirit of partnership and ethos has also extended within universities across 12 different academic schools, linking social science to arts and humanities, science and technology, and medicine.
“So NCF became something of a mechanism of convenience for the university and its partners, in a space between public, private and community sectors, and between disciplines, a valuable commodity when the gap between agencies and academies can seem to be unbridgeable.”
Some of the key outputs from the project include:
Over 50 new projects were initiated by Newcastle City Futures, ranging in size, scope and scale. Some are at a mature stage, others are still emerging.
A full list of the projects and their details can be found on the Newcastle City Futures website – but for starters here are three case studies:
Future Homes: Digitally Enabled Sustainable Housing for the Lifecourse
The project is developing new housing exemplars that will combine innovations in flexible living, materials, digital technology and zero/low energy systems to provide supportive homes for everyone at any life-stage. Future Homes fuses a programme of public conversations and citizen centred co-design with scientific research to create a test-bed where entrepreneurs, established businesses and new entrants to the market can develop new solutions that are a step change in urban responses to the biggest global challenges.
Achievements:
Metro Futures: Digital Train Design for an Inclusive Society
Tyne and Wear Metro is one of the UK’s busiest light rail systems, carrying 40 million passengers a year. Nexus wants to ensure the design of its new fleet reflects the aspirations and needs of people across the community, and throughout their lives.
The project worked with people across Tyne and Wear to understand their needs and develop proposals for future Metrocars through pop up labs and an interactive website. These insights will then be used as designs for new trains and developed with suppliers in 2018/19.
Achievements:
Parking App for Newcastle City Centre
Newcastle City Futures is working with North East company ProxiSmart and NE1 to develop an app for Newcastle that allows drivers to gain parking credits when they spend money in local shops. The partners are also interested in extending this model to public transport use.
Now that the project has matured, what can we learn from Future Cities Newcastle? Louise Kempton, Senior Research Associate, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University and Project Manager at Newcastle City Futures shares some pointers.
For further information on the Newcastle City Futures project head along to www.newcastlecityfutures.org