How can urban centres benefit physically from the digital revolution?
Impact of the digital world and the need to adapt
With the digital and online worlds becoming more and more entwined with everyday life, it is remiss to not also blend the online and offline worlds within an urban setting. With big data used as an asset, it can help consumers, partners and makers shape more bespoke solutions for people connecting to their urban centres.
Drawing from urban centres strengths, attract and increase footfall, investment and businesses
What are the barriers, what are the easy wins?
Relationships are always key. Through mutual trust and respect, scoping new initiatives are always fundamental.
How can you draw out the best traits and characteristics of your urban centre?
What makes your urban centre unique and what are its strengths
Every urban centre has uniqueness. Be that their past, the spaces, people, groups and organizations that reside there. Combined, there is a kind of ‘accent’ in how it reveals itself. For example, Camden Market is a wonderful mosaic of market stalls, creatives and makers. Every town in Switzerland oozes with cleanliness, flora and culture. Stratford upon Avon is marinated with a Shakespearean narrative in every street. We call these Wells of inspiration and rhetoric that residents can draw upon to shape their Urban centres.
What does an innovative and thriving urban centre look like?
Process of collaboration, design and delivery
Gone are the days of how the high street used to be. With out of town and online shopping replacing a lot of consumers going to the urban centres, there is a need to remould how these spaces are used. It’s requires assessment of what is there, drawing in the more partners, space to be innovative and the capacity to deliver on these actions.
How can collaboration and community shape our urban centres?
Partnerships, civic, commercial and community
Urban centres are always filled with people who are connected to all sorts of people, groups and organisations. So why not get these institutions closer to where they are residing in the urban centres - making these locations a better fit for purpose.
What we believe
Mission statement:
Reshaping how society interacts with their city and town centres. For working, learning, living and playing - thriving hubs for creativity, productivity and innovation.
Known facts
- The decline of the identikit, chainstore dependent, high street will allow a town’s true identity to emerge, creating unique reasons to visit that place and new opportunities for growth
- Digital retail has powered a renaissance in artisan & creative start ups that now need a physical base and community
- Urban Festivals will become key attractors and differentiators of place in a post Covid-19 economy
- Urban Futures is an innovator in urban renewal
- More than a think tank, Midland Retail Futures will harness creative thinking to deliver interventions that produce lasting change, a lab that reimagines what the centres of our communities are for and how the high street brings us together
- Urban Futures is a place maker that uses its expertise to reunite communities with their stories, harnessing event and festival to build a powerful future narrative for our towns and cities inspired by partner projects such as the Bristol Housing Festival and MotoFest Coventry
Contact us
METHODOLOGY
- Workshops
- Research
- Networking
- Project delivery
- Evaluation
PARTNERS
