Festival on the City of the Future

Bristol uses festivals as a tool to engage residents and celebrate development rather than just reporting on decisions afterward. Festivals follow one after another each year, and when we arrived in Bristol, it was to take part in a three-day festival with the city as its theme. Not only focusing on their own city, the topics also expanded to the broader question of what we can and must do to create better cities for the world we live in.

The Festival of the Future City 2017 addressed citizen dialogue, tactical urbanism, participatory design, architecture and culture, traffic and green spaces, and how cities in England were rebuilt after the Blitz, and how cities in Syria might one day be rebuilt. Most of the talks and seminars are available to listen to afterward. On Thursday, some of our team joined Making the City Playable 2017, a one-day “conference within the conference” focused on using cultural elements and game design to attract residents and visitors to interact and engage with the city in various ways.

We also took the opportunity to explore the city of Bristol more closely: the old harbour area that has become a hub for culture and events, the railway area around Bristol Temple Meads which will be the next major densification project, and the street art in Stokes Croft.