In Your Shoes - Stuart Oliver

Monday - City Quay and a catch-up with Boston

Hello! I'm Stuart Oliver, Head of Economic Development at Urban Foresight. We're a place-based innovation consultancy working right across the UK and internationally on projects designed to improve outcomes for people and places. I'm based at our Dundee office in City Quay alongside half of the economic development team, with the other half working from our Newcastle office.

It's a special year for us as Urban Foresight celebrates 15 years in business in 2026, and we've got a series of things planned to mark the milestone and celebrate the impact we've made over that time.

My week starts in our Dundee office at City Quay, catching up with the economic development team to plan out the week ahead and talk through the projects we've all got on the go. I genuinely love working from City Quay, it's a beautiful spot, looking straight out onto the HMS Unicorn. Not a bad view to start the week with.

In the afternoon I'm on a call with the chair of the Boston Town Centre Business Association, that's Boston in Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts! Town and city centre strategy is a big part of what we do, and this project has involved helping Boston set up a business association as an alternative to a BID, a different model for bringing local businesses together to drive change. Today it's just a Teams call, but I'm already looking forward to getting back down to Boston in person before long.

That's one of the best bits of this job: working in so many different places, getting to know their stories, and working alongside people who genuinely want to make their places better.

Tuesday – Strategy work and circular thinking

Tuesday morning, I'm back in the office working on the CirculariTAY regional circular economy strategy, making changes ahead of a stakeholder workshop next week. CirculariTAY brings together partners from across the public, private and third sectors who've come together to develop and deliver a new regional strategy for the circular economy.

A lot of our work has this shape to it: we engage with stakeholders to really hear their views, their challenges and their ambitions, then combine all of that with our own research and analysis to build a strategy that can deliver genuine change.

It's been a good one to be part of. It's a positive and committed group, and there are a lot of good things coming for the Tay Cities Region off the back of this work.

Wednesday – Down to Durham

Today I'm down south in Durham for a client meeting. We are just wrapping up a major piece of community and stakeholder engagement across 11 towns in County Durham, plus Durham City itself, to help inform the development of Strategic Place Plans for each one.

Over the last 18 months, our team have spoken to around 15,000 people across County Durham, hearing their hopes and ambitions for their towns, and listening to the challenges they face. Community engagement is something we really specialise in, and we've been able to get brilliant results: a proper demographic spread, and real participation from the voices that too often go unheard.

It's a piece of work we're proud of. One of the most interesting things has been watching the common threads emerge, the shared wants and needs that surface again and again, even across towns with such distinct characters of their own.

Thursday – Newcastle and the bigger picture

From Durham, I head up to Newcastle to work from our office there for the day. It's a good chance to catch up in person with the Newcastle-based economic development team, as well as colleagues from across the business.

Urban Foresight isn't just economic development, we also work on zero emission transport and clean energy projects, and on health and social research, so I make sure I get together regularly with the other group heads to talk through where our work overlaps and where there are opportunities to collaborate. Some of the more interesting projects happen at those intersections, when a place challenge meets a net zero one, or the social research sharpens how we think about a local economy.

In the afternoon I join a webinar on the introduction of visitor levy legislation across the rest of the UK. Scotland is ahead of the curve here, the legislation is already in place, and we've carried out early feasibility work for four different Scottish local authorities so far, including Dundee, which we're especially pleased about given it's our home turf.

It's a fascinating and genuinely challenging area of policy, and I've no doubt our Scottish experience to date will be of use to local authorities across the border as they start to grapple with it.

Friday – Home turf and a bit of history

I'm back in Scotland on Friday. I'm based between Dundee and Perth, which is ideal as it is handy for the office, but also with easy access to the national road and rail networks, which matters when a lot of my job is being out and about meeting current and potential clients.

This morning I'm in Stirling for a meeting about a potential new commission, supporting an investor to make the case for the positive social and economic impact their plans would bring to their chosen location. It's the kind of work I enjoy, helping good development happen by getting the evidence and the story right.

In the afternoon I'm back home and on a Teams call with a client just across the border in the North of England, a large working and visitor estate with a huge amount of history and heritage. We're working with them on destination development: growing the experience they offer and the income that comes with it. As a self-confessed history geek, I'm particularly looking forward to this one.

And that's another of the best bits of the job, getting to work on things you're genuinely interested in. No two weeks are quite the same.