Birmingham and the West Midlands is a metropole in England with a population of 2.9M people. In the past, engineering innovation propelled us to become the industrial powerhouse with a strong cultural identify. Now people-centered innovation is driving a transformation of our economy by combining our creative and engineering heritage through key clusters. This is what we mean by saying we are making innovation work in the most human of places. We are home to one of the youngest and most diverse populations in Europe. People are at the centre of our vision and strategy for innovation that aligns with plans for growth, digital, net zero and international engagement. Our submission describes how we coordinate our vibrant ecosystem based on deep partnerships between stakeholders through planned activity, while encouraging grass roots development and inclusive innovation to flourish. We illustrate some of the 100+ incubators and support programmes available to help anyone launch and scale a business and our ambitious plans to develop new innovation districts to transform some our most deprived communities through colocation and engagement. We highlight how we proactively collaborate with other cities & regions across Europe. Finally, we explain how we are innovating local government, creating forums for citizens to participate and investing in skills to ensure people are not excluded from the emerging jobs and the wider digital world we live in. If we were to be successful, this would provide a new injection of momentum to build on the wave of civic confidence created through the Commonwealth Games in 2022. We would invest the prize and proactively collaborate with the excellent iCapital community to further improve citizen engagement, the scaling up of businesses with underrepresented founders, stimulate our base of small businesses to innovate and develop more innovate approaches to tackling deprivation.

Women face higher risks and burdens than men in transport, due to unequal access to resources, education, job opportunities and entrenched socio-cultural norms. The TInnGO project will develop a framework and mechanisms for a sustainable game change in European transport using the transformative strategy of gender and diversity sensitive smart mobility. It will address gender related contemporary challenges in the transport ecosystem and women’s mobility needs, creating a route for Gender Sensitive Smart Mobility in European Transport, which considers diversity of different groups. Intersectional analysis, with gender aligned to socio cultural dimensions, will be applied to different types of transport data, assessment tools, modelling of new mobility policies, planning and services to show prevalence of transport poverty in traditionally hard to reach groups. TInnGO will show how inequalities are created and address gendered practices of education, employment, technological innovations and entrepreneurship as arenas for change and inclusion of gendered innovations. A Pan European observatory for gender smart transport innovation (TInnGO) will provide a nexus for data collection, analysis, dissemination of gender mainstreaming tools and open innovation. TInnGO's emphasis on diverse and specific transport needs is shown in its unique comparative approach enabling contributions from, and influence of 13-member states in 10 hubs. These will employ qualitative, quantitative and design research methods, combining hands-on knowledge, concrete actions and best practices to develop gender and diversity sensitive smart mobilities and solutions through associated ideas factories (TInnGIdLabs). No former EU funded project has applied an intersectional gender approach to smartening transport. TInnGO will therefore lead research into a new era and use the knowledge to achieve impacts on Social, Economic, Environmental and European ambitions of growth, wealth and innovation.

SUITS takes a sociotechnical approach to capacity building in Local Authorities and transport stakeholder organisations with special emphasis on the transfer of learning to smaller sized cities, making them more effective and resilient to change in the judicious implementation of sustainable transport measures. Key outputs will be a validated capacity building program for transport departments, and resource light learning assets (modules, e-learning material, webinars and workshops), decision support tools to assist in procurement, innovative financing, engagement of new business partners and handling of open, real time and legacy data. SUITS argues that without capacity building and the transformation of transport departments into learning organisations, training materials will not provide the step change needed to provide innovative transport measures. Working with nine cities to model gaps in their understanding, motivation, communication and work practices, will provide each city with a map of its own strengths and weaknesses with respect to sustainable transport planning. From this, strategies to enhance capacity, based on each authority’s needs will be developed and organisations provided with the necessary techniques to increase their own capacity, mentored directly by research partners. Local champions will be trained to continue capacity building after the project. Using the CIVITAS framework for impact evaluation, the effectiveness and impact of SUITS in enabling reductions in transport problems such as congestion and pollution while improving cities capacity to grow as well as the quality of life for urban dwellers and commuters through the development of inclusive, integrated transport measures will be measured in the cities and at individual, organisational and institutional levels. All project outcomes will be disseminated in a stakeholder engagement program at local, national and EU wide levels, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful transport measures.

SPROUT provides a new city-led innovative and data driven policy response to address the impacts of the emerging mobility patterns, digitally-enabled operating & business models, and transport users’ needs. Previously tested and implemented policy responses employing access restrictions, congestion charging or infrastructure provision, seem today, unable to adequately address the changes underway in the urban mobility scene. Furthermore, any policy responses should take into all stages of the policy lifecycle and should have an eye not only to the present but also to the future. Therefore, starting from an understanding of the transition taking place in urban mobility, SPROUT will define the resultant impacts at the sustainability and policy level, will harness these through a city-led innovative policy response, will build cities’ data-driven capacity to identify, track and deploy innovative urban mobility solutions, and will navigate future policy by channelling project results at local, regional, national and EU level. To achieve its goals, SPROUT will employ 6 city pilots (including China) with real-life policy challenges faced as a result of urban mobility transition in both passenger & freight, covering urban and peri-urban areas, different emerging mobility solutions, and context requirements. The project pays special attention to the needs of vulnerable groups and users with different cultural backgrounds, taking also into account gender issues. SPROUT ensures an active participation of numerous representatives from authorities of small & medium-sized cities through a 3-layer structure of cities’ engagement approach, and through the creation of an Open Innovation Community on Urban Mobility Policy.