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Glasgow secures £24m ‘smart city’ cash

January 25 2013

Glasgow secures £24m ‘smart city’ cash
Glasgow has seen off competition from 30 other UK cities to secure a £24m government grant to transform itself into a test bed of technologies geared toward demonstrating how a city of the future might work.

The Future Cities Demonstrator, set up by the Technology Strategy Board quango, is intended to trailblaze a number of innovative technologies that can make more efficient use of existing infrastructure.

The windfall will be funneled directly into a number of hi-tech measures including the creation of a series of new smartphone apps designed to provide more detailed information on traffic and public transport timetables.

Other measures in line for support include feeding the city’s CCTV cameras network into its traffic management unit in order to respond to traffic incidents in real time. This would dovetail with the use of cutting edge analytical software to identify and monitor crimes being committed on the streets.

Ways and means of providing cheaper gas and electricity to disadvantaged areas will also be explored.

TSB project leader Scott Cain said: “Glasgow has some quite extreme challenges - it has the lowest life expectancy of any city in the UK for instance - and the hope is that if we bring together energy, transport, public safety and health it will make it more efficient and a better place to live."

Universities and science minister David Willetts added: "From transport systems to energy use and health, this demonstrator will play a key part in the government's industrial strategy and give real insight into how our cities can be shaped in the future.”

2 Comments

Edward Harkins
#1 Posted by Edward Harkins on 25 Jan 2013 at 10:39 AM
This is really fundamentally good news for Glasgow. It follows in the wake of the HSBC bi-annual international survey of 201, 'The Future of Business. That survey predicted Glasgow, alongside Bristol, as being one of the tow new growth cluster cities in the current low-carbon, green decade. A 'big mo' building here?
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/edward-harkins/15/40/635
Appleseed
#2 Posted by Appleseed on 25 Jan 2013 at 15:00 PM
It's truly great news, but I have to say, I'm slightly skeptical about what good introducing travel apps etc, are when we can't even get the fundamental public transport system working in the first place.

How can we claim to be a smart city when it costs £1.85 to go 6 stops on the bus and all day passes don't cover evening buses.

It seems to me like we (the taxpayer) are paying for the kind of transport service innovation that first should be paying for as the leading transport provider. How about these companies match fund the innovations?

Another victory for privatisation.

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