Insights for Infrastructure Thought Leaders (Page 1)

Strategic infrastructure consulting backed by 30+ years global experience and futures-oriented research.

Infrastructure decisions made today will define societal outcomes tomorrow. These curated articles explore how:

Ancient agricultural terraces meeting modern infrastructure

Stone-Age Instincts Are Quietly Sabotaging Tomorrow's Infrastructure

Infrastructure has run on the same extract, build and discard bargain since the Neolithic. A new paper argues the discipline needs futures and foresight, and a partnership with nature in place of a war against it.

To be a humanist, and therefore interested in human flourishing, means it is necessary to also be an environmentalist. For 12,000 years we have built the modern world on a single bargain with nature involving turning natural materials into infrastructure (the roads, pipes, ports and power stations etc that are humanity's life-support system) and handing them back as waste. That bargain built civilisation, and it is now straining the planet that underwrites it, which should not be news to anyone.

This article is a condensed version of my peer-reviewed paper published in Sustainable Futures this month. It argues that infrastructure planning has barely revised the thinking behind that bargain

Private Finance Only Works When the Public Sector Is a Capable Partner

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

Maximise Competition First, Regulate What's Left: The Lesson the 1980s Keep Teaching

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

Why We're Still Fighting a Public-vs-Private Battle Rome Started

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

Insights for Infrastructure Thought Leaders

Societal directions, through an infrastructure lens

Define Infrastructure Wrong and You'll Fund It Wrong

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

Thermal power station at dusk

Disrupted Infrastructure – The Case of the Unemployed Power Station

Infrastructure built for a different era is starting to lose its job. Using the electricity sector, this piece traces how disruption, falling renewable costs and the “grid edge” are stranding conventional assets — and what it means for investors, regulators and the rest of us.

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Ancient agricultural terraces meeting modern infrastructure

Stone-Age Instincts Are Quietly Sabotaging Tomorrow's Infrastructure

Infrastructure has run on the same extract, build and discard bargain since the Neolithic. A new paper argues the discipline needs futures and foresight, and a partnership with nature in place of a war against it.

Private Finance Only Works When the Public Sector Is a Capable Partner

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

Maximise Competition First, Regulate What's Left: The Lesson the 1980s Keep Teaching

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

Why We're Still Fighting a Public-vs-Private Battle Rome Started

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

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