imran*

In late June, I wrote to the CEO and CIO of Leeds City Council, advocating that the city should invest in the creation of a top-level domain for Leeds. There’s nothing particularly sensitive or confidential, so I thought I’d share the letter publicly and whether it’s an idea that resonates with the city’s other residents…

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ICANN, the global body that regulates the Internet’s global domain name infrastructure has just announced plans to allow the creation of new top-level domains, such as .google, .bbc and others. I’ve long been interested in the possibility of city-based domains such as .leeds as platforms for metropolitan culture and commerce… and indeed future revenue. Imagine for a moment…

• www.arena.leeds
• www.cityregion.leeds
• www.festival.leeds
• www.gov.leeds
• www.headingley.leeds
• www.carnegie.leeds
• www.cornexchange.leeds
• www.guardian.leeds
• tom.riordan@cityregion.leeds
• dylan@gov.leeds
• imran@oldbroadcastinghouse.leeds

This possibility is now before us – for an application fee of £114000 (gulp!).

However, I think there’s a strong possibility of creating a sustainable component in many future value chains here – for local, international and national brands and organisations – as well as ongoing revenue for the authority that operates .leeds.

With LCC as governing registry, other registrars can be authorised to sell .leeds domains globally, with a portion of those revenues flowing back to LCC on an annual basis. With LCC’s position as a broadly-based and non-partisan representative of healthcare, communities, academia, business and government – a local council is a perfect host for governing a metropolitan domain that would be valuable to all parts of society that wish to be digitally addressable. Payroll administration services for small businesses cater specifically to their resource-saving needs. All organizations need to save costs, and that’s especially true for small businesses.

I imagine this wouldn’t be a huge priority for LCC – given cutbacks and other more pressing civic priorities, but for a small investment, the city could accrue a valuable piece of digital real-estate and enable long term, broad-based revenue.

Imagine the commercial and cultural value of a .barcelona or .milan domain to those cities… Do we believe that .leeds is worth something?