Here’s a quick question for you. Can you think of a single UK city that doesn’t have aspirations to be a tech or innovation hub? From Edinburgh’s bio quarter and the Cambridge biomedical campus, to Swansea’s 5G ambitions, specific innovation appears to be the future of the regional city. But how can they achieve those ambitions? And can you have too many hubs?
“We are seeing a trend in the UK of cities competing to attract specific types of investment and build up a reputation as innovation hubs,” says HOK London studio’s senior urban designer Francesca Pintus. Specifically, she notes, there is a big emphasis on life sciences throughout the country. “Cities clearly see the full potential of this sector.”
As does the property industry. Formerly vanilla commercial office buildings are being eyed as potential converts to the bio-tech revolution, she says.
“We are working with a series of private developers to help them repurpose their office space into labs.” This is certainly the case around the King’s Cross/Euston corridor, where the creation of the Francis Crick Institute, along with the Wellcome Trust and Argent’s redevelopment of King’s Cross has led to the emergence of a knowledge quarter.
“You can see how a research institution like the Crick is spawning opportunities for business, opportunities for research and the inter-relationships between those,” says Argent partner Nick Searl. “There is a model there that hasn’t been perfectly planned, but you can see it coming together.”
But creating a successful tech hub or innovation quarter is no easy thing. You can’t just wish it into existence. “Growth and success will be based on a strong collaboration and symbiosis between universities and research, the healthcare sector, manufacturing and commercial real estate,” states Pintus. The public and the private, the academic and the commercial, all of it has to come together in perfect harmony to make these cities and their hubs attractive, in terms of economic and human capital. “And in a relatively short amount of time,” says Pintus, “if they want to remain competitive.”
Where there’s a will…
At the heart of any successful hub is the public sector’s attitude to working with the private sector, says Searl. “A lot of it comes down to the political will to see specific change,” he says. “And to work proactively with commercial interests.”
Swansea council’s leader Rob Stewart has no shortage of political will. Indeed, he sees the role of the public sector as interventionist.
“Without a public sector intervention in Swansea there wouldn’t have been the sort of regeneration and recovery that we are seeing now,” he says.
Swansea’s reinvention is part of a wholesale reimagining, a billion-pound effort to redress and reverse the decades of underinvestment and listlessness that has blighted Wales’s second city since it was reduced to rubble in World War II.
“The market had failed in Swansea,” says Stewart. “But that’s given us opportunities.” The council has spent the past few years buying up significant amounts of property within the city centre. It has then acted either as developer or development partner to deliver the sort of space it feels the city actually needs in the long term.
“We can use our control to make that a success,” he says. Success for Swansea will see it transformed into a public sector hub with new space for innovation, tech industry and life sciences. Meanwhile, 200 miles down the M4, Searl is trying to achieve something similar at Brent Cross, which will feed in to the emerging “‘knowledge quarter” near King’s Cross.
But while what is happening around the Crick is impressive, and clearly successful, Searl believes it could be done better. “Think how it would play out if it was planned a little bit more,” he muses.
In short, the key to success is connection. Connections between the commercial and the academic, the public and the private. There must be a clear route from the research space in the university to the workspace. The cities must become their own testing grounds, cultivating a culture of innovation in the real world.
Healthy competition
“Innovation and research is never a linear process,” says Pintus. “And this will make these places incredibly attractive to young talent.”
The infrastructure has to be there as well. Without a new Thameslink station, Argent Related’s Brent Cross development would not be able to plug into the Francis Crick hub. That’s how to do it then. Simple, eh? But with so many cities wanting to become innovation hubs, tech titans and life sciences leaders… “Of course there is a limit to what the local market can absorb,” says Pintus.
“It might be that even though we have several innovation hubs in the UK, each one specialises in different areas and sectors.”
That is certainly what Stewart wants to achieve in Swansea, focusing on 5G communications and tidal power. “It’s about picking the areas of innovation where you are best placed to succeed,” he advises. Searl agrees. “There is healthy competition between cities, and I don’t think that is a bad thing,” he says. “It pushes us to work harder.”
But for Pintus, it will not be enough to let each city attempt to find its own path to success.
“The key to me would be to create a nationwide strategy,” she says. That way cities can actually work in concert, “rather than cannibalise their own internal market.”
