Infrastructure decisions made today will define civilisational outcomes tomorrow. These curated articles explore how:
Cross-Sector
A $175M investment in lunar infrastructure signals the privatization of humanity's cosmic expansion—but who benefits when space becomes another asset class? Read the original article
Housing
When residents become co-researchers rather than consultation subjects, social housing innovation shifts from technical optimization to community-centered sustainability Read the original article
Social
Indonesian villages are pioneering a radical approach to tourism infrastructure that prioritizes community capitals over corporate profits—offering a template for regenerative development. Read the original article
Cross-Sector
Research reveals how social class fundamentally shapes people's willingness to make environmental sacrifices today for future generations, exposing hidden inequities in green infrastructure planning. Read the original article
Cross-Sector
As climate variability intensifies, crop insurance systems are becoming a critical but invisible infrastructure layer that determines which agricultural communities survive and which are abandoned to managed decline. Read the original article
Cross-Sector
Financial innovations designed to support low-carbon transitions may paradoxically generate new emission growth points through transformed human capital patterns. Read the original article
Cross-Sector
Infrastructure planning has systematically ignored the planet's smallest life forms—the microbes that make all human systems possible. What happens when we design for the invisible? Read the original article
New Right thinking from the early 1980s shaped infrastructure in ways that have led to a potpourri of models. Private sector involvement in infrastructure the world over today has been heavily influenced by the post-privatisation era in Britain from the 1980s. Previous posts have talked about what infrastructure is and
Post World War 2 saw a marked change in infrastructure provision in Britain. State led infrastructure became the standard across the Commonwealth until neo-liberalism took hold in the Reagan-Thatcher era. Dergulation, corporatisation and privatisation became central themes in the latter part of the century, with the private sector playing an
The Roman Empire is often seen as having made a pivotal contribution to society. This blog explores infrastructure from Roman times through to the beginning of the 20th century. This might help shed light on why some things are the way they are today. The Romans are widely attributed to
We all think we know what infrastructure until we are asked for a concise definition. This blog aims to shed some light on one way of defining infrastructure. "You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel by infrastructure". So said Margaret Thatcher, and we hear
Civilisational futures, through an infrastructure lens
Quantum optimization is poised to revolutionize how India manages its power grids, transport networks, and logistics corridors at unprecedented scales Read the original article
Current biodiversity monitoring systems privilege Western scientific knowledge while systematically excluding Indigenous and local wisdom that has sustained ecosystems for millennia Read the original article
Queer theory's challenge to binary thinking offers infrastructure planners new tools for imagining systems that resist categorization and embrace multiplicities of use, identity, and temporal experience. Read the original article
Research on multi-ethnic urban satisfaction reveals how infrastructure systems can either fragment or foster community cohesion across generational timescales Read the original article
Research reveals that artificial marine structures disproportionately harbor invasive species, challenging coastal planners to design infrastructure that supports native ecosystems rather than inadvertently undermining them. Read the original article
Agricultural AI infrastructure isn't shaped by technical capabilities alone—it's determined by the preferences and knowledge networks of crop advisors who serve as critical intermediaries between technology and land management decisions. Read the original article
Technology sanctions don't just block innovation—they reshape entire labor ecosystems, revealing infrastructure's hidden human dependencies Read the original article
Knowledge spillovers in AI development may be systematically undermining nations' ability to maintain strategic control over critical infrastructure systems Read the original article
The search for minds in machines misses the point - AI agents may reshape infrastructure through behavior, not consciousness Read the original article
Explores how AI-generated disinformation creates unprecedented risks for global supply chains and critical infrastructure systems Read the original article
Italy's postwar land reform created thousands of modern farms that now stand abandoned, revealing how infrastructure projects fail when they ignore local knowledge and ecological realities. Read the original article
Before GPS and autopilot, airmail pilots literally learned to read the landscape, creating navigation infrastructure through embodied practice and experimental knowledge that challenges our assumptions about how technical systems emerge. Read the original article
Whether you're planning a major infrastructure project, developing a long-term strategy, or seeking specialised training, I'd be pleased to explore how I can help.