MUI Local Advisory Board, 20th June 2024:

NET-WORKING / IDEAS SESSION

‘ENVISION MCR’ – advice to the next government 

This LAB meeting will focus on ‘advice to the next government’, and explore some top priorities for research collaboration. 

The Manchester city-region is a showpiece, both for challenges and for opportunities.  The next 12 months offer a unique moment for change, with a new national government, GM mayoral term, and President of the University. 

We can do a rapid brainstorm on some of the most pressing issues – from net-zero and housing, to mental health and extremism – to explore priorities and linkages between the many strands of our city-region.

We take a futures perspective with a ‘third horizon’ of 15-25 years, and we use the Mind-Lab toolkit for mapping of pathways from crisis to opportunity.  We follow on from the major UK Foresight on Cities (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-of-cities-foresight-for-cities).

The results will be compiled for national & city-region levels, and will help to shape research priorities, within the Urban Institute and across the University. 

Program

Approximate timings & questions to be addressed:

4.00        Welcome and networking drinks

4.30        Intro & scoping: ‘what are the Top 5 challenges for GM’:  (form groups for each).

4.40        Interactive (a): ‘which are the ‘Top 3 changes’ expected by 2040/50?’

5.00        Refreshments

5.20        Interactive (b): ‘which are the ‘Top 3 opportunities’ to work on for 2040/50?’

5.40        Review and next steps

6.00        Close

Facilitation: Joe Ravetz, MUI Future Cities Lead, Principal SAMI Consulting etc.

Potential challenges & opportunities – a ‘STEEP’ long list:

  • Social & community: inequality, health, education, security, cost of living;
  • Technology & infrastructure: AI, IOT, smart platforms, transport, communications;  
  • Economy & business: industry, services, skills, innovation, productivity, social economy;
  • Environment & climate: net-zero & energy, food, air & water, urban ecology, waste;
  • Policy & government: democracy, extremism, global north / south…

 

Background

The Devolution programme in Greater Manchester, and similar city-regions around the UK, is a call for public services to ‘do more with less’, with ‘joined up thinking’, for problems which are complex and inter-connected.  This calls for a ‘multi-helix’ collaboration between public, private and academic sectors. It calls for improved capacity in foresight and the ‘collective urban intelligence’ – the capacity for co-learning and co-innovation between all parts of society.

This session is a pilot for a more indepth collaboration on key challenges and opportunities, to unfold in the coming months and years. 

For more –

See Deeper-City: Collective-Intelligence-and-the-Pathways-from-Smart-to-Wise

Join the interactive Mind-Lab / Laboratory for collective intelligence