THE impact the digital revolution is having on how Glasgow city centre is used for business, entertainment and social gatherings - and how it can respond to that change - will be the subject of a two-day conference later this week.
The Tomorrow's City Centre conference, hosted by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce (GCC), will be chaired by urban policy guru Greg Clark. Senior figures from John Lewis, BT, the University of Strathclyde and others will appear.
Mr Clark, a senior fellow at ULI (Urban Land Institute), will lead a one-day "retreat" for delegates at Glasgow's Blythswood Square hotel on Thursday, the outcome of which will presented to the conference as a white paper the following day. He hopes it will make worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the city's development and city centres in general.
Mr Clark, who visits up to 50 cities a year in the course of his job, said: "We all know that digitisation is creating huge changes in work, entertainment and leisure.
"Historically, of course, those are things that have happened in city centres.
"The big question is, if digitisation is having such a huge change on all of these sectors or activities that are clustered in city centres, what does digitisation mean for city centres as a whole?"
With Glasgow fresh from hosting the Commonwealth Games, and with the referendum also putting Scotland under the global spotlight, Mr Clark said the timing of the event could hardly be better. Asked if there are any cities in particular Glasgow could learn from, he said: "I think there are a number of cities which have had some of Glasgow's recent success, and have in a sense failed to capitalise on that.
"You might point to a city like Bilbao in northern Spain, where a huge effort has been done to redevelop the city centre to create something more attractive and the world has taken note, but they haven't come forward with the decisive next phase of development.
"So there's a kind of lesson in there about sustaining the effort.
"There is never a point when you say the job is finished."
Alison McRae, project director at GCC, said: "We're excited to be working on the Tomorrow's City Centre project with the globally renowned Greg Clark and Urban Land Institute.
"The conference and the retreat the previous day will consider how constantly evolving technologies will influence consumer behaviour and potentially impact the city centre experience in the next five years.
"It will build on work already being done through Glasgow's City Centre Strategy and the Future City Demonstrator, as well as exploiting links and intelligence through private sector partners who know city centres well."
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