The Infrastructure Futures Review below curates critical perspectives on how today's infrastructure decisions shape civilizational futures across technology, equity, and resilience.
Academic climate resilience papers multiply while infrastructure systems continue to fail during extreme weather events. Are we studying our way out of actually building resilient systems? Read the original article
Digital infrastructure has no neutral setting—every network designed for convenience becomes a tool for control. The question isn't whether surveillance will happen, but who controls it and for what purpose. Read the original article
Orbiting solar arrays could deliver 24/7 clean energy without weather disruption or seasonal variation - but at what cost to the massive terrestrial renewable infrastructure investments we're making today? Read the original article
Green hydrogen needs massive water supplies, but semi-arid regions pursuing clean energy face a brutal choice: feed the hydrogen economy or preserve scarce water for human needs over the next 50 years. Read the original article
NASA's $24.5M contract signals the shift from government space programs to commercial space infrastructure. Today's vendor relationships become tomorrow's gatekeepers to lunar and Mars colonies. Read the original article
Infrastructure planners designing for 2075 now face a new question: how do you plan waste management systems when waste streams become improvement opportunities rather than disposal problems? Read the original article
Deep reinforcement learning can now balance cost, performance, and sustainability in real-time infrastructure decisions. What happens when algorithms optimize our cities better than humans can? 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
Every data center built today assumes Earth-bound infrastructure is permanent. But what if orbital hosting proves cheaper and more sustainable? Today's trillion-dollar terrestrial investments could become stranded assets. Read the original article
Men and women experience infrastructure impacts differently, yet most projects ignore gender dynamics. In conservative regions, this oversight can doom even well-intentioned development initiatives. Read the original article
Roads don't just fragment forests—they create 5-kilometer zones of degradation that current planning ignores. Every highway decision today locks in decades of forest decline across areas 10 times larger than expected. Read the original article
The question isn't whether AI will replace human scientists, but how we preserve and cultivate the uniquely human contributions to knowledge creation. Read the original article
Machine learning reveals that green innovation hinges less on technology itself, and more on the strength of supporting institutions. A crucial reminder that infrastructure's future depends on more than just engineering. Read the original article
Sustainable innovation hinges on more than just technology; it demands a 'triple helix' of trust between academia, industry, and government, actively shaped by governance and openness. Read the original article
As AI increasingly manages critical infrastructure, its underlying values become society's values. What happens when algorithms prioritize efficiency over environmental sustainability? Read the original article
As the metaverse evolves, neglecting its infrastructural needs (data centers, bandwidth, security) risks creating a digital divide, mirroring disparities in the physical world. How do we ensure equitable access to virtual spaces and resources? Read the original article
Private space companies are lobbying for 'critical infrastructure' designation, signaling a shift in how we perceive and govern off-world assets. This could blur lines between public good and private profit in space. Read the original article
The idea of satellites as network nodes in a space-based data center challenges the fundamental assumption that data processing must be tied to Earth, potentially revolutionizing latency and data sovereignty. Read the original article
The exponential growth of space debris poses an existential threat to critical infrastructure in orbit, demanding a shift from reactive mitigation to proactive, AI-driven protection. Read the original article
Private space firms are lobbying for 'critical infrastructure' status, blurring the lines between public and private control of essential services. This raises questions about accountability and long-term societal benefit. Read the original article