The Bristol Urban Area Diagnostics Pilot

As European Green Capital 2015 and one of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, Bristol has challenged itself to transform by 2065 into a place where citizens 'flourish' by working together to create wellbeing, and achieve this equitably and sustainably. The Bristol Urban Area can legitimately claim to be in the vanguard of such urban transformation, and yet its development pathway remains characterised by paradox, and the need to deal with some stark realities and to challenge a 'business-as-usual' mind-set if progress towards aspirational goals is to be sustained. This proposal addresses a fundamental issue: what is stopping Bristol from bridging the gap between its current situation and the desired future as encapsulated in the City's various visions and aspirations?

We have forged a partnership focused on the contiguous City of Bristol and South Gloucestershire urban area. We have secured the full backing of the two local authorities, Bristol Green Capital Partnership and Bristol Health Partners, the LEP, the local business community, citizen groups, and academics from across both Universities, with tangible commitments of support. Dissolving siloes through partnership, and a genuine interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration, is core to our approach, and hence both Universities have committed to share equally the financial resources with external partners in a three-way split.

It is a key strength of this project that we are able to leverage extensively on internationally leading research assets, including: 'Bristol is Open', the FP7-funded Systems Thinking for Efficient Energy Planning (STEEP), the Horizon 2020 REPLICATE project, ongoing work at the £3.5m EPSRC/ESRC International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF) and co-produced and co-designed research such as the AHRC/ESRC Connected Communities and Digital Economy funded projects including REACT Hub, Tangible Memories and Productive Margins. We also have access to a wealth of highly valuable data sources including the 2015 State of Bristol Report, Bristol's Quality of Life Survey, and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents & Children that has followed the health of 14,500 local families since the 1990s.

We intend to build on the ICIF cognitive modelling approach which identifies the importance of challenging established mental models since these entrench a 'business-as-usual' mind-set. At the heart is co-creation and co-production, and an acknowledgement that citizen behaviour and action are essential to the delivery of desired societal outcomes such as wellbeing, equality, health, learning, and carbon neutrality.

The work programme synthesises existing domain-specific diagnostic methodologies and tools to create a novel Integrated Diagnostics Framework. We believe strongly that unless an integrating framework is developed to bring together multiple viewpoints, the diagnosis of urban challenges will remain fragmented and understandings will potentially conflict. We will apply this framework in this pilot project to diagnosis complex problems across four 'Challenge Themes': Mobility & Accessibility, Health & Happiness, Equality & Inclusion and the 'Carbon Neutral' city. We have appointed 'Theme Leaders' who are all 'end users' of the diagnostics, ensuring that the process of investigation is cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary, participatory and grounded in real-world context and application.

The legacy of the project will be threefold: firstly innovation in the diagnostic framework and methods needed to address urban challenges; secondly its application to the Bristol urban area and the resulting diagnostics synthesise across the four Challenge Themes; and finally the formation of an embryonic cadre of cross-sector city leaders with the capability to apply integrated diagnostics and challenge the prevailing 'business as usual' approaches.

Focussing on significant challenges. The Bristol Urban Area (BUA) can legitimately claim to be in the vanguard of urban transformation, owing to numerous accolades in liveability, sustainability, and urban innovation. However, its development is characterised by paradox and there are stark realities to face. Significant progress is needed in interconnected challenges of 'health and happiness', 'mobility and accessibility', 'equality and inclusion' and 'carbon-neutral city'. Evidence on the urgency of these challenges is presented in the Case for Support. Our long-term ambition, through effective diagnoses, is to make a significant impact in these areas.

Co-production with end users - partnerships for impact. The Pilot will take us part of the way towards the above goal, yet it is critical to design for impact and ensure the diagnostic framework will meet the needs of future end-users. Thus, this proposal has been co-developed with a wealth of end-users with significant influence (Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire Council, Bristol Green Capital Partnership and Bristol Health Partners). This approach has established a dedicated set of partners, committed to the outcomes and to long-term legacy. End-users have agreed to lead 'challenge theme' investigations, creating an intimate involvement in the project and ensuring they can benefit immediately from the new knowledge.

Supporting the improvement of collaborative practices for health, mobility, carbon-neutral city, equality and beyond. To resolve interconnected challenges in the context of budget constraints, effective collaborations across organisational and disciplinary boundaries are essential. An Integrated Diagnostic Framework focussed on collaborative practices will offer new ways to robustly assess and learn in real time, generating short-term, but potentially large-scale impacts on BUA's mobility and accessibility, health and happiness, inclusion and inequality and Carbon-neutral agendas. However, the framework will also be applicable to other challenges leading to an exponential potential for impact. The diagnostic framework will be publicly accessible on a prominent webpage and shared via partners (engaging at least 450 people) alongside supporting method documents, formal project reports, blogs, and simple guides to help change-makers from a variety of backgrounds replicate the diagnosis in new challenge areas. A joint training session will attract 100+ people and support leadership development. Podcasts and training materials from the session will be made available online for a wider audience. Inclusion in the October 2017 'Festival of the Future City' will secure widespread awareness and uptake amongst the public, international policy makers, academics and businesses. Exceptional support from the Local Economic Partnership, Arup and Buro Happold offers routes to impact amongst business. UoB's Cabot Institute - a coordinator for Future Cities research - will act as an ongoing conduit for the project, coordinating future funding applications, monitoring impact and organising events to ensure continuity of the partnership during any future funding gaps. Regular connection to national and international networks (e.g. UWE's WHO Collaborating Centre on Healthy Urban Environments, Core Cities network, ICLEI, the Rockefeller Resilient City Network) offers routes to impact far beyond Bristol.

The legacy of this project will be threefold: first, innovation in the diagnostic framework and methods needed to address the challenges of urban living holistically; second, the application of this diagnostic approach to the BUA in order to identify the obstacles that have prevented further progress in delivering outcomes; and finally, a legacy through the formation of an embryonic cadre of cross-sectoral city leaders with the capability to use this learning to challenge the 'business as usual' approaches we experience in urban systems in BUA and the UK as a whole.