CHESTER DIGITAL CITY?

What is a digital city?

Most cities are looking at digital technologies as a means of enabling more sustainable growth, creating better connected, safer, greener cities, and making them far better places to live.

Currently Chester has no free, stable Wi-Fi across the city centre to allow access to information on our devices and display boards. At a time when we are reimagining our city centre to better welcome shoppers, visitors, and restaurant-goers alike, putting the visitor experience front and centre, with free Wi-Fi, makes it more likely people will stay for longer, spend more and will be keen to combine business with leisure or vice versa.

Chester City Centre digital transformation and how this leads to a Smart City

Helping visitors to the city have the information they need, at their fingertips, for free, would enhance the city’s reputation. It would also be a big boost for the city’s businesses, of all sectors, who could also have immediate access to footfall tracking data.

Combining this with the rollout of a free City Centre app, which tells visitors how busy their favourite shops and restaurants are in real-time, enables them to book tickets, provides information on car parking spaces and taxicab meeting points across the city, as well as allowing business owners to let their customers know about the offers or promotions they are running or are about to run, would add huge value to the city.

Making our city smarter

Linking to this, by having digital display boards across the city telling the visitor about local events, activities, shows, etc, opens a whole raft of opportunities to use technology to make our city smarter. Chester GAS believes we must now achieve a smarter connected city by working with the council to deliver the necessary infrastructure to achieve this as part of its OCP vision.

Contact hello@chestergreatandsmall.co.uk to see how you can get involved.