How can the infrastructure industry help create resilient, regenerative communities and regions ?

I believe that we need to create the future we want rather than being recipients of the future we get. To ensure a sustainable future for humankind and the planet, I see the future as a combination of outcome-focused, place-based decision-making supported by a transition to a circular economy and underpinned by cyber-physical infrastructure (for example connected digital twins). 

During Covid-19, we brought representatives from across the built environment together to agree Our Vision for the Built Environment. That Vision is that ‘the explicit purpose of the built environment is to enable people and nature to flourish together for generations’. We were particularly thinking of the Seventh Generation Principle, which is based on an ancient Haudenosaunee philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.

My own personal journey has mirrored that of the UK at a national level, as we slowly come to appreciate that the infrastructure sector needs to be focused on the better outcomes for people and nature that our infrastructure can provide, rather than focusing on constructing assets. We also need to focus on the performance of our infrastructure to ensure it is creating resilient, regenerative communities and regions. At the moment, we tend to focus on how productively we construct new infrastructure rather than asking if the things we have already built are providing us with the services that we need to flourish, wherever we are located.

I am lucky enough to be working with some incredible individuals to transform the industry and I feel certain that this vision will help inspire future generations to join us in creating that future.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash