Digital infrastructure is increasingly pivotal in successful placemaking. It is certainly essential in enabling local economies to thrive.
Our inclusive approach ensures that we focus on the needs of the people and organisations that make places work. This type of thinking is exemplified with the work we're currently undertaking with Preston City Council , where, working in close partnership with a diverse mix of local organisations, we are building the Preston Digital Cooperative, a mutual member-led organisation that will control the delivery of key enabling infrastructure and inclusion programmes designed to underpin and empower local people to accelerate the development of an inclusive local economy and build community wealth across Preston.
Sitting alongside this idea of digital place and placemaking, the concept of data residency is of growing importance, as organisations pay increasing attention – in a less stable geopolitical context – to the details of where their data is located.
Locally sited edge data centres are increasingly seen as a key piece of the local economic development jigsaw, and when integrated for heat re-use, bring added value on multiple levels in place-based development terms.