The power of people-first infrastructure

Gary Clark is on a mis­sion. With the UK fac­ing an even greater eco­nom­ic recov­ery than after the Sec­ond World War, this expert gov­ern­ment advis­er believes infra­struc­ture should take cen­tre stage in the cam­paign to “build back bet­ter”. 

Pic­ture the scene. Res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ings, retro­fit­ted to be super ener­gy effi­cient. Cities criss­crossed by pedes­tri­an-friend­ly thor­ough­fares. Roads free of pol­lut­ing traf­fic. Urban spaces dot­ted with new parks and pub­lic gar­dens.

“We must grasp this oppor­tu­ni­ty of great change and renew­al to cre­ate a tru­ly sus­tain­able future. The next ten years are crit­i­cal,” says Clark, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist at glob­al design and archi­tec­ture firm HOK.

Coro­n­avirus has sparked many utopi­an visions for a post-pan­dem­ic reboot. So, is Clark’s vision just pie-in-the-sky opti­mism or could our towns and cities real­ly be on the verge of a major sus­tain­abil­i­ty makeover?

Understanding the ‘why’ and ‘who’ of infrastructure

Dis­cus­sions at the very high­est lev­els of pol­i­cy­mak­ing sug­gest such ideas may not be as far-fetched as they may seem. Sev­er­al years ago, the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Europe, a lit­tle-known agency of the Unit­ed Nations, put for­ward the notion of a “peo­ple-first” approach to pub­lic-pri­vate projects.

Giv­en its depen­den­cy on such projects, the infra­struc­ture sec­tor has proved atten­tive. Proof came this sum­mer with the pub­li­ca­tion of a white paper on the future of infra­struc­ture by a work­ing group of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF).

The report inter­prets the idea of peo­ple-first in infra­struc­ture projects through six key prin­ci­ples; envi­ron­men­tal resilience, ben­e­fit-shar­ing, social accept­abil­i­ty, eco­nom­ic and insti­tu­tion­al effec­tive­ness, future-proof­ing and poten­tial for reach­ing crit­i­cal mass.

WEF project leader Joseph Losavio sums up the essence of the list as devel­op­ing infra­struc­ture in a way that “puts the focus on out­comes in people’s lives”. This social­ly-ori­ent­ed approach con­trasts with the industry’s habit­u­al pri­ori­ti­sa­tion with the phys­i­cal aspects of infra­struc­ture.

Anoth­er way of look­ing at it is to think less about the “what” and “how” of infra­struc­ture, Lasavio sug­gests, and more about the “why’ – cli­mate secu­ri­ty, nature con­ser­va­tion, human well­be­ing, and so forth – and the “who”– peo­ple, and even plan­et.  

To prove the idea’s via­bil­i­ty, WEF pro­vides var­i­ous exist­ing case stud­ies. One con­cerns a $1.51-billion project to build four city hos­pi­tals in Turkey. The facil­i­ties, all of which were deliv­ered on bud­get and ahead of time, are cred­it­ed with mak­ing up-to-the-minute health tech­nolo­gies avail­able to the wider Turk­ish pub­lic. They are also fit­ted with a host of green fea­tures, includ­ing rooftop solar and seis­mic iso­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

Anoth­er illus­tra­tive exam­ple is a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship in India that will see 250 mil­lion smart elec­tric­i­ty meters installed across the coun­try over the com­ing years. Among the project’s defin­ing attrib­ut­es is its inclu­sion of end-users in the roll­out plan and future pric­ing struc­tures.

People-first infrastructure is about widening horizons

At its core, peo­ple-first infra­struc­ture is as much about shift­ing per­spec­tive and “widen­ing one’s hori­zon” as it is about spe­cif­ic prac­tices and pro­to­cols, says Jean-Patrick Mar­quet, for­mer man­ag­ing direc­tor for infra­struc­ture at the Euro­pean Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment, and an advis­er to WEF.

“It’s not only achiev­ing val­ue for mon­ey, but also aim­ing at val­ue for peo­ple and val­ue for the plan­et,” he says.

Encour­ag­ing as these ear­ly signs are, the con­cept of peo­ple-first infra­struc­ture remains in its ear­ly days. For the sector’s big play­ers to start think­ing seri­ous­ly about the “why” and “who” of large-scale projects, it will take a strong sig­nal from pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

A few promis­ing signs exist. HOK’s Clark points to the UK government’s lat­est Nation­al Infra­struc­ture Strat­e­gy. Unveiled last month, the £100-bil­lion plan pri­ori­tis­es a raft of sus­tain­abil­i­ty actions, from invest­ing in renew­able ener­gy and flood defences through to installing elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing points and cycle lanes.

Announc­ing the new strat­e­gy, chan­cel­lor Rishi Sunak made explic­it the link to the every­day lives new infra­struc­ture touch­es, argu­ing that the barom­e­ter of eco­nom­ic suc­cess for many is “the change they see and the pride they feel in the places they call home”.

The prin­ci­ples of peo­ple-first are also evi­dent in the infra­struc­ture ele­ments of the Euro­pean Commission’s €1.8‑billion COVID-19 recov­ery deal. Near­ly one third (30%) of this colos­sal stim­u­lus pack­age is des­tined to com­bat cli­mate change, with spe­cif­ic atten­tion also giv­en to bio­di­ver­si­ty pro­tec­tion and gen­der equal­i­ty.

Money and mindset are key

The cen­tral role of infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly green infra­struc­ture, in many gov­ern­ment recov­ery pack­ages goes some way to address­ing the oth­er big chal­lenge fac­ing this bur­geon­ing agen­da, name­ly finance.

To achieve gen­uine scale, the pri­vate sec­tor also needs to reach into its pock­ets. The evi­dence here is less encour­ag­ing, although some pos­i­tive ear­ly signs do exist, says Amy Clarke, chief impact offi­cer at the social­ly respon­si­ble wealth man­ag­er Tribe Impact Cap­i­tal.

“Investors who are famil­iar with the inter­sec­tion­al over­lap between the UN Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals are usu­al­ly keen to see peo­ple-cen­tred design fac­tors as part of an approach to infra­struc­ture,” she says.

By way of exam­ple, she points to investor con­cerns about the impacts on employ­ment of a tran­si­tion to low-car­bon infra­struc­ture. Accord­ing to the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, 30 per cent of the 2.4 mil­lion UK work­ers employed in con­struc­tion are in dan­ger of los­ing their jobs if they fail to reskill.

To avoid this and oth­er sim­i­lar social fall­outs, 161 invest­ment firms rep­re­sent­ing $10.2 tril­lion in assets under man­age­ment have pub­licly pledged to use their finan­cial mus­cle to sup­port a so-called “just tran­si­tion”.

Arguably, how­ev­er, the biggest chal­lenge ahead lies in chang­ing the pre­vail­ing mind­set of infra­struc­ture firms. For one, it involves pri­ori­tis­ing the “pri­or­i­ties of life” over the “pri­or­i­ties of mon­ey”, says Richard Threlfall, glob­al head of infra­struc­ture at KPMG and a mem­ber of WEF’s work­ing group.

Hard­er still could be the industry’s per­ceived latent elit­ism. As opposed to infra­struc­ture firms pre­sum­ing what peo­ple need, a peo­ple-first approach would involve talk­ing to com­mu­ni­ties first. That way, says Threlfall, they can find out “what peo­ple real­ly want”.