Smart City Futures Conference

Smart City Futures Conference Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Peter Mandelson is to join business leaders at a major conference exploring how policy-makers can work with universities to build better, more sustainable cities. The Smart City Futures Conference (Lowry, July 21 – 23) will bring together researchers and policy-makers from across the globe to investigate how universities can help them to develop cost-effective urban policies during the current difficult economic times. The event is the culmination of a year-long initiative which has seen the Universities of Salford, Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan working in partnership with civic leaders, professionals and citizens in the region to forge stronger relationships between academics, businesses and the community. The project is the first of its kind and is aiming to put Greater Manchester at the forefront of policy, strategy development and decision-making within the UK – and as a model for regions throughout the world. Lord Mandelson will officially open the conference on Tuesday 21 July as a guest of Manchester’s Commission for the New Economy, which is hosting the first two conference days. He will be joined by leading business, regeneration and academic leaders including Lesley Gavin, BT’s first female futurologist, and Professor Takeda Shuzaburo, Director of the Business-University Forum of Japan, at the University of Salford-hosted conference day on 23 July.