Welcome to the Foresight Future of Cities [1] project's final update. Since our last newsletter, we've been busy publishing evidence and preparing our final project outputs, as the project formally comes to an end. So, over the coming weeks, we will publish the remaining papers – as well as the three project reports:
- Foresight for Cities: A Resource
- The Science of Cities: Future Research Priorities
- An Overview of the Evidence
Look out for these documents on the website in the coming days and take a look at ‘The Future of Cities, Graduate Mobility and Productivity: An Experiment in Place-Based Open Policy Making’, which was published recently. It explores the evidence on graduate mobility and highlights practical solutions to improve local economies and national productivity developed by cities, universities and national government. There is also a blog [2] on the project which you can read on the Cabinet Office’s Open Policy Making website.
Later in the month, Prospect Magazine will be publishing a ‘Cities Supplement’ to accompany their April edition which will feature articles on the Cities project from Professor Sir Mark Walport and Sir Alan Wilson. The supplement will also include articles on a range of cities topics from Lord Adonis, Sir Richard Leese, James Wharton MP and Bruce Katz amongst others.
The Cities Project Team in the Government Office for Science will be moving on to new projects, but we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the project over the last three years, especially the members of the Lead Expert Group, our working paper authors and particularly to pay tribute to Professor John Urry who made such a valuable contribution to so many of the project’s events. We would also like to thank the members of the City Visions Network who provided us with so much feedback and guidance. We are hoping a meeting of the City Visions Network will be arranged later in the year, so watch this space for further details!
In the meantime, we hope you find our reports interesting and engaging and that they continue to inspire you to think about the future of cities.
All the very best,
The Future of Cities Team