Ian Gibson surveys the map

The phrase ‘science city’ instantly conjures up Hollywood images of robots manically policing the streets, or if we are to believe the recent BT networking solutions ad, science cities are places in which people get around by somersaulting onto flying circuit boards.

Our prudent Chancellor, possessing neither the flair of an ad man nor the cheesiness of Hollywood, meant something more tangible when he named York, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol, Birmingham and Nottingham as science cities.
        In his last two budget speeches he persuasively argued the need for the UK to rediscover its ‘scientific genius’ and warned that unless it did so, it would lag behind its competitors in the global economy.  And just in case anyone doubted the seriousness of his intent, Gordon Brown earmarked a substantial amount of the national purse (£2.5b) for investment in science, and produced a 10-year plan to strategically push through the investment.

But what does this all mean?

According to the Chancellor, to qualify as a science city a city must have ‘strong science-based assets – such as a major university or centre of research excellence – which have particular potential to use these assets as the basis for generating business success.’

The chosen six are believed to have these assets and are therefore the lucky recipients of extra research grant funding for the universities and businesses in their areas. The treasury believes that supporting ‘university-business collaboration’ in science cities will lead to the growth of ‘knowledge-intensive industries, such as skills, transport, finance and infrastructure’ which in turn will attract innovative businesses and drive economic growth in the regions where the science cities are based.

Gordon’s formula is simple: Investment in Science = Economic Growth.

Let’s hear it for Norwich

Call me biased, but I would argue that a city like Norwich is more than ready to join the Big Six. It surely does tick many of the boxes needed to qualify. It has ‘strong- science based assets’.

True, UEA may be dragging far behind Oxford and Cambridge in developing spin-out companies, but it is also far younger than they are and has come a very long way from  its humble beginnings in the early 1960s.  It has gone from just offering English and Biology in 1963 to offering a whole host of humanities, social science and many scientific disciplines such as medicine, pharmacy, computer science, environmental science, nursing and midwifery amongst others.

UEA graduates are raising the pulse of business activity in Norwich and the city is supplying the NHS with some of the best trained health professionals in the world.  In addition, its environment department is said to be one of the best in the country.

Potential for success

There is no doubt that much work is needed to make Norwich a science city, but surely that is the point of the Chancellor’s idea. The cities he has chosen so far have shown that their greatest asset is their potential, and cities like Norwich have that in abundance.

For example, with some investment, the Environmental Sciences department could set up partnerships with sustainable energy companies and could well be on its way to making every household in Norwich more environmentally friendly. The city also has the brain power to put itself on the map by developing an ecologically sound transport system. If this does not serve as the basis of ‘generating business success’, nothing will.

Norwich is not the only candidate. Since the Chancellor announced the first six science cities, Dundee and a miffed ‘why didn’t you include us in the first place’ Leeds have also been asking for science city status.

Science education

So how do we get the Chancellor to sit up and notice aspiring science cities?

Education would be a good start. No science city can thrive if its younger residents lack access to good science education. We need to nurture an interest in all things scientific at an early age. It is therefore heartening to know that there are plans to set up specialist science and technology schools in the near future. But we need to go beyond this and develop our country’s wild life gardens and improve school trips.

Outside the classroom we have to make the public keener on science, and what better way to grab the public imagination than the idea of a science city in their locality?

Dr Ian Gibson is MP for Norwich North