'Global science cities and new innovation districts' - REPORT part one

Image: Oxford Science Park in March 2026

Future Cities Forum's first report from its 'Global Science Cities' discussion event at The Oxford Science Park looks at how the vision for the Cowley Branch line can create new housing and jobs as well as aid the development of science lab expansion. It also compares the innovation districts of Stockholm and Copenhagen, to find out how these cities tackle the similar challenges of infrastructure development and affordable housing to support their science economie as cities do in the UK.

In the first part of our 'Global Science Cities' report, there are insights from Oxford City Council, Stockholm Science City, Innovation District Copenhagen, British Land, Exeter College, Oxford and Thomas White Oxford for Oxford North.

Future Cities Forum has run its series of 'Science Cities' discussions to look at the benefits of urban as well as suburban and rural science parks with commentary on best practice in joined-up infrastructure planning and housing provision. Oxford City Council says that by working with Oxfordshire County Council, local landowners, Network Rail and Department for Transport, it will re-open passenger services on the Cowley Branch Line in Oxford:

'The line will be upgraded and two new stations built: “Oxford Littlemore” (for Littlemore and The Oxford Science Park) and “Oxford Cowley” (for Blackbird Leys and ARC Oxford). The planning assumption is for two trains per hour via Oxford Station through to London Marylebone Station. 

'The new rail stations will connect significant employment sites and residential areas to the city centre in less than 10 minutes, with the possibility of direct connections to Oxford Parkway, Bicester and beyond. This would help to improve the public transport options for journeys into and around the City, increasing overall capacity locally, reducing congestion on our roads and contributing to a better rail network in Oxfordshire and the wider region. Network Rail estimates up to 1,000,000 journeys per year will be made using the new stations after only three years of operation.

In addition to transforming journeys, reopening the Cowley Branch Line to passengers will support the sustainable development of new homes and commercial employment spaces already proposed near the stations.'

Carolyn Ploszynski, Director of Regeneration, Economy and Sustainability, at Oxford City Council, told Future Cities Forum at our discussion event:

'It will be transformative. It's not a heavy piece of infrastructure to deliver but there just needed to be the investment and confidence in it. The city is only 46 kilometers squared and over half of it is open space in terms of floor zone and green belt and the average vehicle moves at eight kilometers miles an hour at peak times. It can take 15 minutes to go less than 10 kilometers. That is the main problem. So we can keep pumping buses into the network but places but it is extremely difficult to connect to the wider city by public transport. The communities that sit around this science park and in the Oxford Cowley location, which is by the business park, suffer the same problem, and these are some of our most deprived communities in the city and they are among the top ten in the country. In Blackbird Leys, 40% of people don't have access to a car, and so they are completely reliant on public transport. So in terms of social equity, the Cowley Branch Line will be transformative to business, but also those communities.

'There are two elements to the Cowley Branch Line, one is just local connectivity. At the Oxford Cowley location there needs to be a bridge over that railway to connect the Blackbird Leys community physically to the branch line and this is unfunded at the moment. But my team has been working with developers too on community employment plans and working with Enterprise Oxford on the skills agenda. The supply chain around science sites is massive and getting the community involved in working in that side of the science industry is really important. Facilities management and supply chains associated with science parks provide a range of jobs.

'We have a vision for more homes. We have already got about six to ten thousand homes essentially stored across the branch line area and we think the line will help give the confidence for some of sites to unlock. But we have also done a capacity study to identify another ten thousand homes.'

On a question about preserving heritage in the city, Carolyn said:

'I guess it is always the balance that Oxford has to strike, but this part - the southern part of the city - has the biggest growth potential of the whole place and so that is why the Cowley branch line is so important, to unlock it. Every site in the city is difficult. Part of the problem is that the city has not been able to grow for such a long time. Government re-organisation will help unlock opportunity and significant growth in the city. Outside the city there is a massive anti-growth lobby about the city expanding its bounds. That has been going on for a long time but I think recent research showing that Oxford has been left behind significanlty on the global stage is evidence that the policy is not working. Unless the city is able to start delivering infrastructure and release more of its green belt, the city is just going to continue to flounder and will not stay competitive. It is why we believe that the three unitary councils is the way forward for Oxford and that we should release a further green belt to deliver 40,000 additional homes for Oxford in addition for further science and employment space for the city. There is always a fine line between regeneration and gentrification and that's the line we have to walk with the Cowley Branch Line. We have the benefit at the city council of being the main housing developer and housing stock owner in the city, so we can control that to a degree.I absolutely think we can win out against anti-growth. We need to start to deliver to show that growth isn't necessarily bad.'

Image: Hagastaden, Stockholm (courtesy Stockholm Science City Foundation)

The forum discussion moved on to look at the example of the City of Stockholm to draw comparisons, challenges and talent attraction. CEO of Stockholm Science City, Ylva Williams explained:

'I think our situation is a little different. We started off with a blank sheet of paper. We started exploring an area that had been a parking lot for trains. It is an area at the centre of the capital of Sweden. It is here that we have had a problem with housing, but this development actually added 7,000 new dwellings. Right from the beginning, we had people with high salaries buying them. So in one way it is quite a privileged area. At the same time we have a new university hospital and the Karolinska Institute, while the medical university decided to invest in youth facilities as well. With the new university buildings we also invested in a huge infrastructure project, life science labs for research into genomics and there are a thousand post docs gathered inside this Life Lab, beside those at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University Hospital.

'So talking about challenges for us, it is actually about inviting other disciplines into this life science innovation district. We need to have the tech industry close by and we do not have any tech companies here at the moment. Ericsson has decided to move here and we hope they do but we haven't seen it yet. The small innovation companies cannot afford to be here, so we have to try to help them in the future. So it is getting the right mixture.'

Ylva was asked about whether there are any design principles behind the proposed expansion of the district. She said:

'Unfortunately not, much is being driven by the real estate developers. They need tenants immediately and they don't care who they are as long as they pay. With the government here it always boils down to do we put money into healthcare or into giving flexible places for the companies, flexible rentals etc. In that case, it is quite an easy choice for the politician to choose more money for healthcare, and even though we could claim that many of these companies would make healhcare cheaper in the future, it is really hard to convince them. International talent say they like the lifestyle here, the balance between work and family and we are good at that here. But if you talk to the companies from overseas and ask them why they are here, they say it is easy to find the right competencies. We have a lot of life science companies in a small area, it is very high density and it is easy to find the right person. They are job hopping within Hagastaden and within the innovation district. So that works well and that is something that is beneficial for the companies.'

Image: view to Innovation District Copenhagen (courtesy IDK)

Attracting talent globally to Copenhagen was taken up in the conversation by Lene Rasmussen, Head of Secretariat at Innovation District Copenhagen:

'We have a lot of momentum here and the innovation district has been written into some of the national strategies for entrepreneurship and for Quantum. The latter is an area that is up and coming and there is interest in Copenhagen around this. We have an historic anchor in the Niels Bohr Institute too, but we need to attract investment. We have a very nice city but it is small market, in terms of testing and selling your product. So we are looking at a Nordic Alliance or European Alliance. We look at ourselves as a very internationally placed district with Stockholm , Norway, Germany and the UK nearby, but we are small geographically and struggling with our two square kilometres.

Lene was asked what companies were asking for in order to invest, were they demanding neurodiversity-designed labs and/ or looking at Copenhagen's sustainability credentials?

'It really comes down at the moment that we do not have much space to offer. Companies want to come and locate next to our big specialised hospital, the Rigshospitalet, another hospital that is in partnership as well, the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Technical University. They are high ranking and their research environments are also really sought after as well as the quantum community. We really want and need to create more space but we are not likely to have the production facilities for Northern Nordisk or another pharma company in the city centre, but we would like smaller branches, smaller groups that can also co-locate right next door to the clinicians or the researchers at the universities. We are having some framework conditions that area changing, where the universities are allowed to actually rent out space on a larger scale and that is what we are working on, seeing if we can actually co-locate the bigger companies, the spin outs and the researchers.'

Lene was asked whether it would work if science companies could operate out of the centre of the city?

'That is a very good question. So we have a new vision plan that came out last year for the development in the district, and that is in four phases, where we look at the very close area, the centre of the innovation district, which is very small, where we have identified all the possible areas and where we can construct new buildings or transform existing ones.

'We have other places close by, but what we want to create is actually also density. So we want people to be so close that it almost feels too close. I mean, the need to be able to run into each other. That is one of the points with an innovation district that you bump into the next employer or someone you can get a good idea together with. So we start small, but yes, then we kind of look out broader and also because we do lack the space.. We're pooling it together. So all the different building owners and area owners have identified where they can pitch in for this comprehensive development of the district.'

Image: Paper Yard at Canada Water in south east London, courtesy of British Land

British Land's Amber Morley, who was part of our discussion, compared the firm's science development at Regent's Place in London's Knowledge Quarter with the firm's new masterplan in the capital's Canada Water, suggesting that there may be new ways to plan innovation hubs:

'So across our London portfolio, we've got Regent's Place. It's got slightly different characteristics, more towards biotech companies with a focus on AI happening as well. So a lot of our tenants are from that space. You've got on the one hand, a 13 acre campus where we're taking an existing, kind of quite tired office buildings and re-positioning them into something exciting. And then, as you said, at the other end of the spectrum, we've got Canada Water, which is a huge 500-acre master plan opportunity. I suppose what we're getting at is that the offer is slightly different in those places. So at Regent's Place, you've got universities on your doorstep, you're part of the Knowledge Quarter already. You've got infrastructure, research institutes, and importantly, students and people to plug into straight away, whereas at Canada water, we're creating something new from the ground up. And so yes, there's been some quite exciting opportunities in that respect.

'If I just take the example of Canada Water, we've got quite an interesting opportunity to kind of lean into and I suppose it's energy, resilience, climate, tech market and that sector, and that's because these companies often need land for light industrial or we've got our paper yard building, which is a temporary modular building, and that building is a bit rough and ready, so you can kind of do the hard tech experiments in a way that you might not be able to do in a in a shiny lab space within Regent's Place. So it's as much about what physical infrastructure, as well as the feel and as well as you know how much land and what types of buildings you've got available. But I'd say the winning ingredients are still the same in terms of your proximity to who's around you, the types of buildings that you've got, and then how are you as a real estate partner, bringing together different experts to effectively help those companies grow faster in the location that you're putting forward'

Amber then contrasted her experience working with Plymouth Science Park:

'I'm a non executive director for Plymouth Science Park, separate to British land. But the reason why I did it was the it's such an interesting contrast to some of the other markets that we're talking about. So I spend most of my most of my professional day, thinking about how we create these places in London, Oxford and Cambridge, with some of the highest value markets within the UK,. Plymouth. is a completely different type of asset. It's still a science park. It's still got those winning ingredients in the same label on the front door, but it's a joint venture owned by the university and the council. And so the the purpose of the Science Park and the way you measure success is completely different.

'So for Plymouth Science Park, it's much more about job creation, leading the purpose of the park and economic development, whereas with my, you know, property developer hat on, I'm solving for a slightly different outcome, even though the places that we're trying to achieve and create probably look very similar at the end. So yes, Plymouth is where we've just announced a kind of tie up with the NHS Hospital, which is next door. Plymouth Science Park is much more about getting amongst local businesses and really helping to grow them and making sure they have a chance of getting somewhere. Whereas the work I do with British land in London, Oxford and Cambridge, is much more about businesses that have an idea already and looking to scale and are slightly higher growth. So different challenges, but still the same ingredients.

Image: the proposed development of EXOq, close to Oxford Parkway station and to Kidlington, courtesy of Exeter College, Oxford.

Exeter College Oxford has been developing plans for EXOq, a newly proposed science hub, beyond north Oxford at Kidlington. It says:

'At the heart of the proposal is Sovereign High- Performance Compute (HPC) infrastructure to power and accelerate research of global significance and its commercial development. The data centres will be quantum compatible.

EXOq will support research and development in many areas requiring significant compute power and data storage capacity such as climate, advanced materials, particle physics, space and satellite technology, NHS data for drug development and the development of computer science and AI.

Beyond its strategic importance for the region and the UK, EXOq will deliver substantial benefits for local residents, including: a new park and amenities for Kidlington supporting the wellbeing of communities and tackling social isolation; a further education college providing skilled local employment opportunities in hardware and IT; a low-carbon heat facility for the area; and improved active travel links to Oxford city and Kidlington.

The Bursar, Nicholas Badman, who contributed to our forum, was asked how this new science park would be creating a new USP as an innovation district, how it would display sustainable principles and how it will be able to survive with so many competing campuses around the city?

Nicholas said:

'It's a complex site. One of its key advantages is its location, it is adjacent to Parkway station, and part of our plan is to improve access to the station which will help East West Rail, the wider city and the Growth Corridor.

'At the top eastern end of the planned district we are only 200 metres from the station so we are working on cycle and pedestrian routes and connections over the bridge and barriers to that station.

'EXOq is not an isolated hub but will be good for Oxford, for the Oxford ecosystem, good for the region and potentially good for the nation. The idea is to centre the innovation districts around around high performance computing infrastructure to power the eco of Oxford. We have woven quantum into it because we believe Oxford has a reasonable standing on quantum globally, there are quantum computing companies in place locally, and while quantum may or may not work - people say it will be early 2030s before. commercial sales kick in - but the government's announcement of a procurement process of up to £2bn for quantum is helpful. We are very concerned that there is a commercial scale quantum computer located at EXOq - it is about the co-location of HPC with AI with quantum.

'We are big believers in the idea that for economic growth to work it has to work for everyone so we are offering upskilling to 18 year olds. We are planning a new FE college in the district. There is an explosion in the requirement for information jobs and the new college could help with those.

'We are determined to offer proper local benefits to the communities...the site is quite boggy but we will create a completely accessible parkland amenity, and also flood storage capacity by the canal. At the public consultation feedback was constructive. There is a feeling that Kidlington is a bit of a satellite but we think this development will push the gravity of Oxford north, as we are looking to create 7,000 jobs.'

Image: courtesy of Oxford North

Oxford North is a new development creating a million square feet of labs and workspaces, 480 homes and three new public parks. Victoria Collett, Development Director at Oxford North, who joined the discussion, said she is seeing great success in encouraging the local community to use the site:

'I think what's exciting is what we've been able to do for the community since we opened, and how the narrative has changed so much from the very adversarial planning process, which is adversarial by its very nature. So what we see now, is a lot of local people from Walden Park coming and enjoying their coffee here. I saw someone settling down in the cafe with five spaniel dogs and groups of parents with children. The cafe is often full. So the community has really adopted it, and that's really nice for us to see visually.

'Where we are is quite out of the way, and local people have liked it that way for many years, and it's part of the reason why they were naturally very protective of the area, but I think they've seen the benefits of having a properly landscaped park now. You know, there is a lot of space around here and there aren't that many sort of landscaped areas in this part of Oxford, but there are now wonderful tree species, play areas, and incidental play hiding in the meadow. So it's a wonderful space for children to explore in a completely different way.

'Its definitely, it's a family place. It's also already creating real opportunities, job opportunities for local people. I just came one of one of our social value steering group meetings, and we were hearing from two people they have placed from St Mungo, one in a permanent job at Oxford North, and one on a construction management degree throughout the year that we've worked with. We have been talking with local partners, so local FE colleges and and other local charities joining up the jobs, basically to create career pathways for local people. And that link is really important because North Oxford is relatively affluent, and creating job opportunities for people to the south of the city is really important to us.'

Part two of our 'Global Science Cities' report will be published shortly.

Image: courtesy of Oxford North