Birmingham City Council was one of just three UK cities selected by Eurocities to represent the UK’s digital and innovation credentials at Tomorrow.City Shanghai, using the trip to open doors with international investors and technology firms.
Birmingham’s Head of Digital City and Innovation, Raj Mack, travelled to Shanghai this week to represent the city at Tomorrow.City Shanghai, a flagship Asia-Pacific smart cities event held as part of the wider Smart City Expo World Congress network. The city was one of the only three from the UK selected by Eurocities to take part, a mark of the international pull Birmingham’s digital work now carries.
Why Birmingham was in the room
The invitation followed a strong run for Birmingham on the innovation front: the city was named runner-up in the European Capital of Innovation Awards and was subsequently asked to present at Tomorrow.City 2026. Tomorrow.City Shanghai itself brings together city leaders, governments, businesses, academics and innovators from across the region to trade ideas on practical smart city solutions and the urban challenges that come with them, the kind of room where reputations get built as much through conversation as through the stage programme.
What the visit was for
Raj’s objective in Shanghai was to put Birmingham in front of the people who decide where digital investment lands next: international leaders, technology companies and city officials scouting locations for innovation and R&D. He took part in delivering presentations and city to industry matchmaking sessions showcasing Birmingham’s achievements, alongside the kind of informal exchanges that tend to matter just as much, like comparing notes with other cities, sounding out potential partners, and looking for the products and services that could find a home in Birmingham next.
A win to bring back home
DIATOMIC, Birmingham’s West Midlands innovation accelerator, was awarded in the “Enabling Projects” category. Led by Connected Places Catapult alongside Birmingham City Council, Aston University, Birmingham City University, the University of Birmingham and the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, DIATOMIC has spent the past few years backing SMEs and building the region’s clean tech, health tech and med tech capability, and having that work recognised on an international stage in shanghai is exactly the kind of validation that keeps Birmingham moving forward.
Why it matters here
None of this is separate from the day job. Birmingham’s Corporate Plan for 2025-2028 leans heavily on inclusive economic growth, attracting investment and building the kind of high-value jobs that don’t exist yet, and a city testing its ambition to be a real-world testbed for emerging technology has to whop up in rooms like Shanghai’s to make that case. Every conversation during this week was an attempt to turn Birmingham’s growing digital reputation into something more concrete: new business relationships, pilot projects, or simply the next investor deciding Birmingham is a city worth investing.
The hardest part comes in the months after a trip like this, as early conversations become something tangible or not. But being one of the three UK cities in the room (and coming home with a win for DIATOMIC) is itself a marker of how far Birmingham’s digital standing has travelled.
Web design Adventure
