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Practical placemaking | Article

Connected and sustainable places

Establish how a focus on outcomes, frameworks and systems thinking can help build resilient, connected and sustainable places, where digital services transcend the boundaries of related public services in an area and can help to address ‘wicked issues’ such as climate transition and the drive to net zero.

Authors and contributors: William Barker, Martin Ferguson, Diana Rebaza

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Illustration from the cover of the Public Sector Digital Trends report. There are illustrations of a line graph (heading downwards); a woman sitting looking at a laptop screen; a man standing, surrounded by a swirling line that twists around his whole body - he's looking a little puzzled; there's a fingerprint with a padlock; and then a monitor with drawings of buildings on.

Public sector digital trends

Emerging connected places
Outlines how connected places will have a growing influence on digital plans for local public services driven by ‘whole systems’ approaches to improve public service outcomes and reduce pressures on public services.

Green and sustainable
Looks at how the impact of climate change will be particularly important for public services organisations that are often facing the brunt of these changes. Digital, data and technology are set to play a significant role in the context of holistic organisation-wide and place-based approaches to tackling and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Pressures on technology infrastructure
Explains how the need for rapid expansion in processing, data and self-service access has put strains on underlying technologies upon which digital transformation depends. Public services cannot neglect this risk to resilience, security, service responsiveness and trust.

Publications

Socitm policy briefing: Socitm Connects

Place-based transformation (Socitm Connects report)

Sets out how connected places can support the creation of social and economic wealth, improve productivity and employment, together with increasing health and wellbeing. The aim being to establish resilient, sustainable, socially just ecologically safe places in which people and communities can thrive.

Understanding Doughnut Economics (post-Covid recovery prospectus report)

Describes how the concepts of Doughnut Economics can help places to identify what is unique and different about a place-based approach to using data and emerging technologies. Helps to design better services, leveraging individual and community-wide benefits and better outcomes.

Understanding smart places (guide)

Considers how technology can connect infrastructure, business, communities, public service and individual citizens in ways that were previously impossible, improving economic and social well-being and transforming public services. This research is about how that technology can be used better and more effectively to achieve these connections, not about the technology itself.