Hacking Liveability in a Smart City

When it comes to city life, there are many dimensions to “liveability”. We can look at infrastructure and its impacts – like how long it takes for citizens to commute from home to their workplace. We can look at life expectancy. Or use of communal space. 

We can think about the future and how we’d like to provide alternatives to those long commute times by creating coworking spaces and using technology to empower employees. We can also think about the cultural landscape and what it takes to make a city a great place to live – and by “live” I don’t mean just “work”. Where are the artists? The musicians? What about spaces and opportunities for play and leisure? 

There is so much that goes into “liveability” and our lives are so connected these days, that we sometimes automatically jump to “tech” as a solution to everything. But is tech a solution to life – or is it the opposite?

Recently, Vibewire and the Liverpool City Council hosted a hackathon tackling the question of “liveability” as part of the Spark Festival. Over one weekend, students, business leaders, citizens and artists investigated what it might mean to make a city – like Liverpool – “liveable”. Here is what they discovered.