From Citizen to Co-innovator, from City Council to Facilitator: Integrating Urban Systems to Provide Better Outcomes for People (BOP)

伯明翰城市生活（ULB）联盟汇集了四所大学的专业知识；国内和国际学术机构；还有很多地方、地区和国家组织。由伯明翰大学、伯明翰城市大学、阿斯顿大学和华威大学领导的核心学术团队在城市、工程、服务和社会科学方面拥有世界领先的成绩；一系列开创性的跨学科研究；以及对伯明翰和西米德兰兹郡的深刻理解。2015年11月20日，来自大伯明翰公共、私营和第三部门的39名代表举行会议，讨论城市生活伙伴关系试点呼吁。以该地区的城市为中心，该小组指出，伯明翰在城市服务的发展和提供方面对创新的需求很高，但将这些创新融入主流战略和政策的成功程度和能力差异很大。这就是矛盾所在，很明显，伯明翰和更广泛的英国城市错过了通过有效吸引终端用户来共同创新的机会。作为英国除伦敦以外最大的城市，拥有英国最多样化和最年轻的人口之一，伯明翰市有潜力为21世纪的城市生活设定新的议程。像大多数大城市一样，伯明翰正在经历着破坏性的变化，部分原因是全球经济力量加上国家和地方公共支出的减少。自上世纪60年代末以来，伯明翰在所有经济指标上都表现不佳。此外，2014年对城市治理和市议会组织能力的审查指出，伯明翰存在的问题非常严重，具有全国重要性。该项目通过应用严格的诊断程序，根据最终用户以及公共、私营和第三部门代表提供的数据集分析，确定了伯明翰市面临的各种相互依存的挑战。重点是确定综合和全市解决方案的创新机会，这些解决方案跨越传统的政策孤岛，并有可能将城市转变为繁荣、健康和充满活力的生活场所。伯明翰城市生活联盟旨在通过将自上而下的城市治理与自下而上的外行和专家知识相结合来确定城市服务的改进，从而提供一个强调和鼓励创新的环境，从而产生城市服务提供的步骤变化。它将通过汇集、开发和应用终端用户和开放式创新流程（来自商业学科）以及参与性和合作性设计原则（来自城市设计学科）来选定城市服务和系统，共同创造一个有弹性的伯明翰，为人们提供“更好的结果”。大多数转型服务创新发生在服务提供商超越倾听消费者的意见，与消费者共同创新的时候。这种以用户为中心的创新方法反映了一个最终用户创新的过程，在这个过程中，用户可以修改现有的产品和服务，但服务提供商也可以从这个过程中学习。伯明翰城市生活将有助于伯明翰转变为一个地区资产和全球城市服务创新的灯塔；城市生活质量异常丰富，社会凝聚力增强，贫困减少，连通性和生产力提高，城市人口健康。

The Urban Living Birmingham (ULB) Consortium brings together the expertise of four universities; national and international academic institutions; and very many local, regional and national organisations. The core academic team, led by the University of Birmingham with Birmingham City University, Aston University and the University of Warwick, have world-leading track records in cities, engineering, services and social sciences; a portfolio of pioneering inter-disciplinary research; and a deep understanding of Birmingham and the West Midlands. On 20th November 2015 a meeting of 39 representatives from across Greater Birmingham's public, private and third sectors was held to discuss the Urban Living Partnership Pilot Call. Taking a city focus within the context of the region, this group noted that the appetite for innovation in the development and delivery of urban services was high in Birmingham, but the degree of success and ability to integrate these innovations into mainstream strategies and policies varied greatly. Therein lies the paradox and it became evident that there is a missed opportunity for Birmingham, and British cities more generally, to co-innovate by effectively drawing upon end-users. As the largest city in the UK outside London, with one of the most diverse and youthful populations anywhere in the UK, the City of Birmingham has the potential to set a new agenda for 21st century urban living. Like most great cities, Birmingham is experiencing disruptive change brought about in part by global economic forces combined with reductions in national and local public expenditure. Since the late 1960s, Birmingham has performed poorly on all economic indicators. In addition, in 2014 a review of the city's governance and the organisational capabilities of the city council noted that Birmingham had problems that were so significant that they were of national importance. This project identifies the diverse and interdependent challenges facing the City of Birmingham by the application of a rigorous diagnostic process based on the analysis of datasets informed by end-users and representatives from the public, private and third sectors. The focus is on the identification of opportunities for innovation in integrated and city-wide solutions that cut across traditional policy silos and that have the potential to transform the city into a prosperous, healthy and vibrant living place. The Urban Living Birmingham consortium aims to identify improvements to urban services by combining top-down urban governance with bottom-up lay and expert knowledge to provide an environment that emphasizes and encourages innovations that generate a step change in urban service provision. It will do this by bringing together, developing and applying end-user and open innovation processes (from business disciplines) and participatory and cooperative design principles (from urban design disciplines) to selected urban services and systems to co-create a resilient Birmingham that provides 'better outcomes for people'. Most transformational service innovations occur when service providers go beyond listening to consumers to co-innovating with consumers. This user-centric approach to innovation reflects a process of end-user innovation in which users can modify existing products and services, but also service providers can learn from this process. Urban Living Birmingham will contribute towards the transformation of Birmingham into a city that is a regional asset and a global beacon for urban service innovation; a city with an exceptionally rich quality of urban living, increased social cohesion, reduced deprivation, increased connectivity and productivity, and a healthy urban population.