The Digital City

Data, Planning, Design

Radical, connective, and shot through with urgency, the digital city is no longer a vision – it is the infrastructure of everyday life.

From real-time data flows to algorithmic governance and participatory platforms, technology is reshaping how cities are planned, experienced, and contested. 

Yet the promise of the digital city raises as many questions as it answers. Who controls the data? Whose voices are amplified, and whose are erased? And can digital tools genuinely serve the collective good, or do they risk encoding the inequalities they claim to dissolve? 

Join Theo Blackwell (Chief Digital Officer, Greater London Authority), Euan Mills (Future Cities Catapult), and Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs) as they interrogate the systems, politics, and possibilities shaping our urban futures. Together, they bring perspectives from the front lines of city-making — where policy, technology, and civic imagination must find common ground. 

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS

Theo Blackwell

Theo Blackwell is Chief Digital Officer for London, appointed by the Mayor to lead the capital’s data and digital strategy. A former Camden councillor with a background spanning politics, public policy, and urban innovation, he has been a central architect of London’s approach to smart city governance. His work focuses on building digital infrastructure that is open, ethical, and genuinely accountable to the communities it serves. 

Euan Mills 

Euan Mills is a researcher and strategist working at the intersection of urban technology and public policy. Based at Future Cities Catapult, he has led influential programmes exploring how data, digital tools, and emerging technologies can be harnessed to improve city systems and citizen experience. His work bridges the gap between technical possibility and the practical realities of urban governance, with a particular interest in making smart city thinking accessible and actionable. 

Indy Johar 

Indy Johar is an architect, urbanist, and co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, a civic venture working to redesign the institutional and systemic conditions that shape cities. A provocateur as much as a practitioner, he has spent his career interrogating the deep structures — legal, financial, cultural — that determine how cities function and for whom. His thinking on civic infrastructure, democratic governance, and the politics of change has made him one of the most compelling voices in the global urbanism debate. 

Our talks are open to the public and professionals alike.
The event takes place at Arnolfini, Bristol, BS1 4QA