July 2022: The role of infrastructure in levelling up – are we creating vicious or virtuous cycles?

Following her thought-leadership presentation for CSIC’s Industry Partner Strategy Day, and ahead of the EPSRC–NSF funded UK-US workshop ‘Funding, Financing and Emerging Technologies in Infrastructure to Improve Resilience, Sustainability and Universal Access’, hosted by CSIC and the Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy (CPIP), Dr Rehema Msulwa, Research Associate at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, considers the role of infrastructure in levelling up in this extended Smart Infrastructure Blog.

The EPSRC–NSF funded UK-US workshop ‘Funding, Financing and Emerging Technologies in Infrastructure to Improve Resilience, Sustainability and Universal Access’ seeks to explore questions about infrastructure in relation to “levelling-up” within, between and across societies, and inclusivity and widening access in the context of an ever more urgent transition to net zero and rapidly emerging technologies. The workshop will take place in New York between 11 and 15 July 2022 and several plenary sessions will be shown live via Zoom webinar as part of the dedicated online programme.

Equitable access to infrastructure

The UK is one of the most spatially imbalanced countries in Europe and the industrialised world with stark spatial differences in productivity growth – an important enabler for higher living standards. Within region differences notwithstanding, places in the south-east of England have seen higher productivity than the north and therefore more prosperity, investment, and higher rates of employment. While there is some overlap, equity in infrastructure access is regarded differently in the USA where policies and legacies of racial inequality and marginalisation have been exacerbated by urban redevelopment.

Infrastructure investment decisions have implications for people, places and the environment. Such decisions are not value neutral and they have the potential to produce both winners and losers. The themes addressed in the workshop ‘Funding, Financing and Emerging Technologies in Infrastructure to Improve Resilience, Sustainability and Universal Access’ call for robust debate about how infrastructure decisions are made and ultimately implemented. What is meant by value in this context– whose perspective of value is adopted? How, by whom, and to whose advantage, or disadvantage is the perspective of value applied? As relates to digitalisation and the shift from physical infrastructure to digital infrastructure – what are the associated changes in social and business contexts? What are the implications of commodifying information and which parts of the value chain have access to emerging technologies? Who develops the standards? Who wins? Who loses? Dr Rehema Msulwa, Research Associate at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge

Patterns of inequality including spatial inequalities are decades if not centuries in the making. Entrenched patterns of productivity growth and development mean that underdeveloped places where productivity is low will tend to have a less skilled workforce with poorer prospects for increases in salaries or organisations’ profits and overall wellbeing. In places experiencing low productivity growth this will lead to a vicious cycle that feeds persistent growing disparities, economic decline, and disinvestment. On the flipside, high productivity growth can lead to a virtuous cycle of opportunity.

Piecemeal policies, financing and funding are not sufficient to bring about transformational change. Instead, short-term and underfunded responses coupled with constant changes in policy can aggravate rather than alleviate entrenched problems. Long-term, intentional, and systematic approaches to policy, appraisal and infrastructure financing and funding are required. This is the case for reducing the UK’s wide geographic inequalities in incomes and productivity – a government priority as stated in the Levelling Up White Paper published in February this year. It is also the case for infrastructure development considerations in the USA as set out in the Biden Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law aimed in part at preventing deeper marginalisation and restriction of spatial access to selected community groups. Crucially, other factors will need to be considered including workforce health and skills, local geography and institutions and the composition of economic activity.

How then can equity be achieved across all sectors of infrastructure, through the infrastructure lifecycle from planning to construction to operation? This and related questions will be discussed by delegates at the workshop.  Broadly, the aim is to stimulate discussion that contributes to developing consensus on a uniform working definition of equitable infrastructure, determining performance indicators of infrastructure equity, and determining how infrastructure can be financed and funded while preserving and developing equitable access especially with the transition towards net zero.

The transition towards net zero

The built environment has been and continues to be a significant contributor to the climate crisis. Beyond the impact on natural systems, practices such as carbon leakage have also seen an increase in emissions in jurisdictions beyond the reach of carbon-pricing policies, and worsened conditions for those regions and people who are already highly vulnerable to climate hazards. As such, the recently published IPCC report recognises that in addition to being effective and feasible, climate-oriented solutions should conform to principles of justice i.e., concerned with setting out the moral and legal principles of fairness and equity in the way people are treated, often based on the ethics and values of society.

It follows that a rapid and just transition to net zero must consider the need for resilience in existing and new infrastructure, while minimising harm, and facilitating inclusivity and widening access; and an overall “levelling-up” within, between and across societies. The process of transitioning is multi-faceted and will not be without challenges as can be expected in the context of transformational change.

As relates to the transition to net zero, the workshop will explore a broad series of questions in areas of technology, funding and finance, justice in climate adaptation and mitigation, and the specific challenges around achieving net zero carbon. Given the unintended consequences of societal demands, often driven by developments in and the availability of new technology, the workshop will also consider how infrastructure can contribute to less environmentally damaging forms of consumption of goods, resources, energy and transport.

Resilience

In the face of the rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, ranging from droughts to floods infrastructure needs to be made more resilient and robust. This cannot realistically be achieved all at once, and needs a long-term strategy encompassing the targeted enhancement of vulnerable critical infrastructure and taking advantage of routine maintenance and renewals to make improvements more generally.

In this regard the workshop aims to provoke discussion by posing questions such: What resilience do we need in our infrastructure systems? How do we achieve it in terms of technology, funding and financing, and societal buy-in? How might we accelerate the uptake of initiatives that are proceeding at a slower rate than is desirable? This includes the move towards sustainable urban drainage systems, making space for water so that rivers can temporarily flood.

Funding, financing and technological adoption

Deciding what the future needs to look like and setting about making it happen will require funding, financing, and technological adoption at scale. New technologies related to materials, sensing, communication, and computing are expeditiously emerging at an accelerated pace relative to past decades. However, the effects of emerging technology on enhancing infrastructure resilience, for example, can be difficult to quantify and are therefore not fully appreciated.

Building on ongoing questions about funding and financing infrastructure and valuing emerging technologies, the workshop seeks to create a common level of understanding that can help address knowledge gaps stemming from the widely different backgrounds that workshop delegates will bring to the meeting. Discussions will also explore how the data or interpretation obtained from emerging technologies can empower decision-makers to improve system resilience, especially when system resilience exceeds the expectation. Along with constructive debate, the aim is to support fruitful interdisciplinary progress in this area.  

Infrastructure is a socio-technical system

Infrastructure investment decisions have implications for people, places and the environment. Such decisions are not value neutral and they have the potential to produce both winners and losers. The themes addressed in the workshop ‘Funding, Financing and Emerging Technologies in Infrastructure to Improve Resilience, Sustainability and Universal Access’ call for robust debate about how infrastructure decisions are made and ultimately implemented. What is meant by value in this context– whose perspective of value is adopted? How, by whom, and to whose advantage, or disadvantage is the perspective of value applied? As relates to digitalisation and the shift from physical infrastructure to digital infrastructure – what are the associated changes in social and business contexts? What are the implications of commodifying information and which parts of the value chain have access to emerging technologies? Who develops the standards? Who wins? Who loses?

All these questions must be carefully considered by people at all levels of decision-making if intended benefits are to be realised. Great aspirations, high-level policy and policy goals without detailed delivery specifics are inadequate – we need more.

• For more details about the UK-US workshop ‘Funding, Financing and Emerging Technologies in Infrastructure to Improve Resilience, Sustainability and Universal Access’ see here.