Built in Poland, quietly shipped to Malmö, many had seen it lying 500 metres away on an empty construction site waiting patiently for its final destination.

And there it was. Its arrival was documented in the local paper, many had gathered to watch the journey: first on a barge on the canal and then lifted in place by two cranes, a careful work requiring millimetre precision. Its red body made of steel, weighing 110 tons - a solid construction although one that had no chance against the grand bridges, like that connecting the Øresund, Malmö to Copenhagen, visible a few blocks away. But still somehow majestic in the scale of a neighbourhood - or the two that the bridge was there to bridge: the corner of Västra Hamnen, connecting Varvsstaden and the Malmö University campus. The bridge was part of the latest changes in this rapidly evolving area that used to host the Kockums shipyard, the heart of the old industrial Malmö, and today, a place of living, work and leisure for many.

There was a certain softness to it. Perhaps because it was created for human-scale welcoming people on foot, bicycle or similar.

It won’t take long, maybe a few more weeks or months until the bridge will have become part of our idea of the place – part of the landscape in our minds, our routes and our plans. Not long after, will we start to take the bridge for granted and our everyday habits will suddenly rely on it. And without noticing it, the red bridge will have left its mark on the neighbourhood and the people living, working and studying in it.

The bridge will have truly become part of our infrastructure.

Infrastructures everywhere

Like our red bridge, we are surrounded by infrastructures of all kinds. They are the physical structures, like buildings and roads, the digital systems, the natural areas, both green and blue ¹ and the "soft" social and cultural institutions our lives and lifestyles depend on². Infrastructures are the settings and contexts of our lives, constraining and enabling our activities. In her book How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World to answer the question “What makes infrastructure, infrastructure?” Deb Chachra points out that, strangely enough, a good point of departure is “All the stuff that you don’t think about³ ”. Inspired by this definition and building on it, the insights that emerged in the process that this book is one result of, can be summarised in two tweaks of this wisdom. Namely that, infrastructure is:
“The stuff we don’t think about, unless it fails us.”
“The stuff we should think about.”

Coming to terms with today

In the late spring and early summer of 2024, a group of 23 infrastructure experts, researchers, students, designers, architects, urban planners, strategists, facilitators, creatives and innovators came together in a Collaborative Foresight cycle on Futures of Infrastructure hosted by Media Evolution and DigIT Hub Sweden. The conversations that followed were prompted by the question “How will we design and maintain digital, hard, soft, and green infrastructures in Southern Sweden in 2050?”.

Over the course of four days, they mapped out signals, trends and drivers, discussed dynamics of change, created scenarios, explored alternative pathways and envisioned desirable futures of infrastructure. They were joined by community members in open workshops offering observations, perspectives and feedback.

The group was brought together by curiosity, care and concern for the rapid changes in our cultural, ecological and economic systems that our infrastructures are in many ways both causes and effects of.

They observed and discussed how extreme weather events, like floods and heavy storms, longer warm and dry periods, new invasive plant species and diminishing coastline are impacting human and other lives in Southern Sweden and how recent wars and violent conflicts have in a rather short time led to rapid securitisation and militarisation with little end in sight.

They noted how the polycrisis expands to our economy where many see a zero-sum game, an addiction to growth, with the vision being ‘more of something for just a few’. They discussed individualism gone rogue, segregation and polarisation, AI-powered divisive propaganda, dopamine culture, mental health crisis, over consumption and how general discontent and lack of political representation is feeding a sense of a lack of future.

At the same time, Southern Sweden⁴ is increasingly young, diverse and urban with a multiplicity of culture, languages, ideas and hopes for the future.

Geopolitical tensions and other crises, including the memory of the most recent pandemic, are pushing us to consider resilience, increasingly, over effectiveness and growth.

The green transition, in all its different shades, has taken its place in most agendas. Many have come to realise that we cannot keep up with linear models of resource consumption and overuse – circularity and reducing resource consumption are beyond necessary.

The group reflected on how technological development, including the rapid developments in generative AI, are forcing us to return to conversations about the meaning of work, remuneration and economic justice. And how carbon mapping, digital twins, the increasing availability of data and monitoring tools are promising more sustainable solutions and greater transparency in environmental impacts across the value chain. And they saw the emergence of ideas like degrowth, regenerative practices and approaches, climate activism, downsizing, new ownership models, co-living and small space living, movements for peace and freedom for all, co-design initiatives, the appreciation of our public spaces and infrastructures, new sharing economy models to name a few.

They also considered how there are those to learn from - the places and countries that have a long history of having to adapt to extreme weather conditions. And they observed old and emerging practices of adapting, coming to terms with and caring for our infrastructures in an unstable world, as beautifully put by one of the core group members: built on resilience to “make space for the unpredictable, for life to unfold”.

The time of infrastructure

Not all futures are the same. Exploring the future of infrastructure puts foresight methods into test. So often, foresight processes tend to start with the present moment, or even a hypothetical blank slate.

A topic like infrastructure challenges such an approach by grounding us into place and time. There’s no getting around the fact that the visions and decisions of architects, planners and engineers from the centuries and decades before are present in our lives today, in the sewage systems, the grid, the plan of our cities and roads, the concrete built on the very ground we find ourselves on. We don't start from scratch. Designing infrastructure, whether soft, hard, green and blue or digital, most often build on, redesign and repurpose existing infrastructure.

And when working with infrastructure, there’s no question whether we are shaping the future or not. In shaping infrastructure, we are creating conditions and contexts for the future – whether we are designing a new bridge, repurposing an old shipyard for a place of creative and digital work or volunteering in civil society organisations working with disenfranchised youth. Although humans and other species will continue to get creative with and shape their contexts, the infrastructures they find themselves in will constrain and enable their actions and the effort it takes to change.

And as we continue to push planetary boundaries and see the unfolding of the effects of our unsustainable systems, it is evident that change needs to extend to our infrastructures that enable and maintain unjust and degenerative practices.

A bridge to the future

What you find in this book are four scenarios of possible futures created by the core group of the Collaborative Foresight cycle on Futures on infrastructure. The scenarios are accompanied by stories about these possible worlds to come, their infrastructures and people inhabiting them. The stories are written by world builder, researcher and sci-fi author Paul Graham Raven who listened in on the conversations that took place when the group co-created the future scenarios.

In the accompanying commentary chapters, you find Deb Chachra's reflections on and recommendations for how, by focusing on how we harness and use energy, we can transform our infrastructures to be resilient, equitable, functional and sustainable. In the second commentary chapter, Györgyi Gálik, Vlad Afanasiev, Ryan Bellinson and Indy Johar dive into the question of systems of governance and decision-making needed for this transformation – a topic that came up over and over again in the work of the core group.

This book is many things. It’s an inspiration, a provocation and a strategic foresight tool for persons and organisations working with, researching and shaping our infrastructures. It's also an invitation to take unusual paths to uncover new questions, perspectives, insights and perhaps even answers.

And finally, this book is a bridge for us to travel on to shift our focus on our infrastructures. This bridge is built on the belief that on the other side lie keys to creating structures that support conditions for good life for all within planetary boundaries. And over there, we find appreciation for and celebration of the practices of maintenance, regeneration and care – of our shared infrastructure and our futures to that matter.