Local context
A city deal, a digital district and a coastline
Swansea sits at the heart of the Swansea Bay City Deal, a regional investment programme led by Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire and Swansea councils together with two health boards, Swansea University, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and private partners. Its projects are organised around economic acceleration, life science and well-being, and energy, smart manufacturing and digital.
In the city itself, the deal's digital district programme includes Swansea Building Society Arena in the centre, a new office development at 71/72 Kingsway aimed at digitally focused businesses, and innovation space at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David's SA1 waterfront campus. That gives start-ups and growing tech firms somewhere to cluster in the middle of the city rather than on its edges.
Other parts of the economy are older and just as important. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency runs from Swansea, making the city a centre for large-scale public administration. Associated British Ports operates the Port of Swansea, its most westerly South Wales port, which handles a wide range of cargo and welcomes cruise calls. And tourism matters: Gower received its landscape designation in 1956, and the peninsula, with Mumbles at its eastern edge and beaches popular with surfers, lies within the City and County of Swansea.