Digital Cities Newsletter 11 (PDF).

Digital Cities Newsletter 10 (PDF)

Digital Cities Newsletter 9 (PDF)

Digital Cities Newsletter 8 (PDF)

Digital Cities Newsletter 7 (PDF)

Digital Cities Newsletter 6 (PDF)

We also hear from the project’s emerging partners and their how they will build on the lesson’s being learnt by colleagues from Almere, Netherlands and Trikala, Greece.

Digital Cities Newsletter 5 (PDF)

In March, partners from Brasov in Romania and Paralimni in Cyprus visited Manchester, UK. This study visit was an opportunity for partners to experience first-hand, examples of user driven innovation and see how organisations such as, Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) and Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab) have applied this approach to their work.

The visit provided the project partners with an opportunity to see how Manchester City Council engages local innovation hubs and works alongside these grassroots organisations to create sustainable development within a City.

MDDA’s consultative approach to ICT development has allowed Manchester’s senior decision makers to see the immediate benefits of emerging technologies for their citizens. For example MDDA leads a recently established Living Lab, which has been instrumental in the research on domestic energy management solutions. This in turn, has led to a number of City-wide initiatives to incorporate the use of green technology in their existing housing stock and even retro-fit these technologies into older homes.

MadLab provides grassroots insight to innovation and encouraged the project partners to get hands-on with Arduino’s and physical computing tools. MadLab’s learning by doing approach to ICT and digital creativity, has given it the informal title of an ‘innovation hub’ for the City – a space where digital and creative people come together and share their experiences.

The relationship between MDDA and MadLab is just one example of how knowledge is transferred between strategic leaders and digital communities to support the City’s economic development. It is hoped that the lessons learnt from these examples will support other in-country knowledge sharing processes for the visiting partners.

2011 starts in earnest, as the DC Planner toolkit (DCPT) nears its completion.

The DCPT is based on an integrated Decision Support Methodology (DCM) focused on supporting regions and local authorities in developing ICT capabilities. The DCM is designed to support authorities at strategic level by recommending appropriate examples from existing best practices in the following categories:

• Infrastructre
• e-Government
• e-Business
• e-Health
• e-Education
• Advanced social inclusion

The idea is that this approach will support local and regional ICT adoption in a rapid and sustainable way. Integrating ICT with strategy will lead to improvements in infrastructure and products and services for a City and its region. The mixing of strategy and ICT will lead to an open and manageable approach to sharing best practices for business and policy development across Europe. Ongoing work to increase and share these best practices will help raise awareness of market trends and emerging approaches for a scalable approach to Digital Cities.

Colleagues from the Digital Cities project share their thoughts and views about the project. Some colleagues from the lead partner countries discuss their views of Digital Cities, what it means to them and the importance of ICT in the current climate.

Digital Cities (Interreg IVC) Partners from MDDA on Vimeo.

Here’s what our emerging partners think of Digital Cities. Hear what colleagues on the receiving end of the Digital Cities workshops and knowledge sharing exercises think of the process.

Digital Cities (Interreg IVC) Partners from MDDA on Vimeo.