Across 6 episodes we’ll be looking into the future of planning, housing, real estate, mobility, town centres and innovation economies. We’ll be asking businesses and innovators how...

How do we plan the places of tomorrow? Where is the digitisation of the planning system taking us? What skills will the planner of the future need? And how is COVID-19...

How does innovation happen in places? What does it mean for a place to be an innovation location? And how important... 

As we gradually start getting back onto trains, buses, trams and tubes how will we get safely from A to B? What does the COVID-19...

Some profound changes are happening in our city centres, and the pandemic is certainly playing a big part. Activity and footfall in our shops, restaurants, and central business districts have plummeted in recent months. Yet, some of these changes have been rumbling away for years...

If there’s one place we’ve all been spending a lot more time in during lockdown, it’s our homes. As we’ve been spending more time in our homes, many of us have been thinking about them more too, and whether the places where we live are adding or subtracting to the quality of our lives.

The pandemic has had a huge impact on our built environment, but so too has the economic fallout. Any economic recovery, whenever or however it may come, is going to rely on our ability to create...

What a year 2020 has been! On so many levels we’ve all had to pause, reflect, pivot, reimagine and rethink almost everything we do.

We’ll be exploring where the opportunities lie for innovation in how we imagine, design and operate the transport systems of tomorrow? What’s the role of a public transport authority in managing the post-COVID economic recovery? What now for urban mobility in London and how can other UK cities learn from overseas? 

In this episode Professor Greg Clark speaks to Lord Nigel Crisp, former Chief Executive of the NHS and an independent crossbench peer in the House of Lords. We’ll be exploring the question of living a healthy life, not just in terms of avoiding sickness and disease, but creating health where...

In this episode Prof. Greg Clark speaks to Prof. Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practise at the London Business School (LBS) and best-selling author. We’ll be exploring what we need to do now if we are to live to 100. What do businesses, policy makers and place leaders need to be thinking about now as we prepare for the age of longevity? 

In this episode Prof. Greg Clark meets Daniel Deparis, Head of Urban Mobility Solutions at Mercedes-Benz. As our towns and cities become more connected, so too are the ways in which we get around them. In this episode we explore how urban mobility is changing. How will connected vehicles shape the connected places of the future? What will they need...

In this episode we ask what we can we learn from past experience to help our transition to net-zero? How can we make sure that the massive and ambitious change ahead is one that promotes individual and societal wellbeing? 

In this episode we ask how place leaders and city planners can help create homes, high streets, public spaces and urban infrastructure which enable human flourishing. We hear from three experts in mental health, human-centred design and...

In this episode Prof. Greg Clark meets Amanda Clack, Executive Director at CBRE, one of the largest commercial real estate services companies in the world. The pandemic and its economic fallout have had a huge impact on the built environment sector. Yet if the UK is going to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it needs to urgently...

In this episode Prof. Greg Clark meets Paul Doney, Director of Innovation & Continuous Improvement at Highways England – the highway, traffic and street authority that manages 4,300 miles of England’s roads...

Active travel is one of the most exciting areas of growth and opportunity within urban mobility – the kind of getting from A to B where your legs, arms and heart have to do their fair share of the work...

How does innovation happen in a place? What does it take to create and sustain an innovation hub? What is it about a district, a neighbourhood, a cluster or a corridor that makes it possible for innovation to flourish?

We’ve all had to find new and creative ways to stay connected over the last year. But one of the most important has been maintaining our digital connectivity. The pandemic has shone a spotlight on all...

The Queen’s Speech this week – which sets out the UK Government’s legislative programme for Parliament – promised levelling up opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses 

and economic growth, as well as addressing the impact of the COVID...

When we think about how places change, we often think in the short term over single business cycles, Mayoral terms or a city’s immediate response to crises and formative events. But stepping back and taking...

If the UK is going to hit its net zero targets by 2050 we need to decarbonise across every sector of the economy – that includes shifting from fossil fuel consumption to electrification and other sustainable energy sources...

In this next part of our series on Hubs of Innovation, we return to the question of how innovation happens in a place. What is it about a district, a neighbourhood, or a corridor that makes it possible for innovation to...

Cycles of technologies and innovations have been connecting and shaping the places where we live and work for centuries - from aqueduct and sewerage systems through to the advent of the motor vehicle, railway and the skyscraper. But the digital age has accelerated the pace...

In episode 16, “Accelerating the UK active travel market” we explored one of the most exciting areas of growth and opportunity within urban mobility, and why it matters so much to the Connected Places Catapult, and the future of healthy, connected and net zero places. Active travel is about...

We’re running a series of dialogues with Mayors from around the world in the lead up to the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow later this year. In the first conversation in the series, we begin with a city that is often lauded as one of the most liveable in the world: Melbourne, one of Australia’s urban...

The physical and digital infrastructure that connects and powers our towns, cities and transport systems is something we don’t often think about until emergency strikes. Which is why in countries all around the world the COVID pandemic has refocussed our attention on the resilience and adaptability of our infrastructure. Yet ironically, how we design, build and...

How can cities strengthen their business cases for net zero investment? And if their plans are brought together and aligned in a new and creative ways, could they generate greater scale, volume and predictability in ways that might make them more attractive to investors?

Cities aren’t so much becoming smart, they’ve always been smart and the history of urban technology is often forgotten when it comes to cities. Yet even the most global and future-facing of cities are living legacies of long histories. Taking a long view of innovation can help us think more creatively in the present about the many possible futures that...

In this instalment of our City Leader’s dialogues, “The net zero road to COP26 and beyond”, we speak to the Leader of Manchester City Council in the north of England; one of the most important cities in the history of the industrial revolution and the story of modern Britain. Manchester has been a hive of innovation, and the urban and industrial technology that’s come...

How does innovation happen in a place? What is it about a district, a neighbourhood, a cluster or a corridor that makes it possible for innovation to flourish? And what is the role of local authorities in curating innovation within and between places? In the 2021 Budget, the UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak MP announced a commitment,,,

In recent months we’ve been exploring one of the most exciting areas of growth and opportunity within urban mobility, and why it matters so much to the Connected Places Catapult, and the future of healthy, connected and net zero places. Active travel is about creating options for us to move more. This can have a massive impact on our physical and mental health, the,,,

In this instalment of our City Leader’s dialogues, “The net zero road to COP26 and beyond”, we speak to Jan Vapaavpouri, former Mayor of Helsinki; the world’s northern most city region with over a million people and the most northerly capital in Europe. Helsinki is often referred to as...

In this instalment of our City Leader’s dialogues, “The net zero road to COP26 and beyond”, we speak to Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol; the largest city in the south west of England and a hotbed of innovation, creativity and discovery going back centuries. Before the industrial revolution catapulted cities like Manchester and Liverpool to prominence, Bristol was...

How can cities strengthen their business cases for net zero investment? And if their plans are brought together and aligned in a new and creative ways, could they generate greater scale, volume and predictability in ways that might make them more attractive to investors? To answer these and... 

The innovation economy has become one of the defining features of the economic cycle, especially the role of innovation in the post-pandemic recovery and the wider ‘levelling up’ agenda. Yet there are stark differences between the innovation activity in different parts of the UK, and there is...

In this episode we bring you some of the highlights from our Active Travel Summit, which we held on 29th September, and what the road ahead looks like for collaboration, R&D, and commercialising innovation in this exciting and growing sector. The summit was a space to explore with innovators, ...

Why has the Catapult been at the UN’s COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow? Well, because so much of what’s being discussed, planned and negotiated here in Glasgow has everything to do with cities, how we think about place, and how we imagine, design, build and...

Why has the Catapult been at the UN’s COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow? Because so much of what was discussed, planned and negotiated in Glasgow had everything to do with cities, how we think about place, and how we imagine, design, build and finance places that are not just liveable, but also low carbon and sustainable. One of the big questions we’ve

How we design, build and invest in infrastructure is at the heart of how we’ll decarbonise our economies, as well as harness the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution. The coming decade is set to be the most consequential in living memory for infrastructure investment, especially for new, low carbon technologies and the industries of the future as we...

Back in the summer of this year, the UK Government launched its Innovation Strategy which set out how the UK plans to become a global hub for innovation over the coming years. It recognised the critical role that place-based innovation is going to play on that journey. One of the many things that place leaders need to take into account is not just how....

It’s been another eventful year at the Connected Places Catapult and we’ve got a lot to look back on as the year draws to a close! We’ve had some great conversations with thought leaders across government, business, cities and industry – from London to Mexico City to New York. We’ve....

It’s been another eventful year at the Connected Places Catapult and we’ve got a lot to look back on as the year draws to a close! We’ve had some great conversations with thought leaders across government, business, cities and industry – from London to Mexico City to New York. We’ve....