Futures of Infrastructure

Designing and maintaining shared social, physical and digital infrastructures have an impact on the economy, the environment, and on human and non-human lives. The technologies, tools, materials and processes to these shared infrastructures—digital, hard, soft, and green—are evolving rapidly. As we learn from natural systems and continue to push planetary boundaries, how will the industries involved in building infrastructures transition and evolve to create resilient, equitable and sustainable futures for humans and our planet?

Together with DigIT Hub Sweden, Media Evolution will gather a diverse group of experts and community members from across the region to examine how we might design and maintain the infrastructures of 2050.

Prompts for this Cycle Include:

How will emerging digital techniques (e.g. large-scale 3D printing) impact what, when, how we design, build and maintain traditional urban infrastructure like pipes, sewers, roads, rails, electrical, energy, and telecommunications?
How might natural/green infrastructure be used to support sustainable urban lifestyles?
What happens when we source used materials and design with what we have? What do we do with what’s left over (e.g. new processes, new roles in sustainable construction?)
How might decentralised, hyper-local construction build resilience and sustainability into urban and rural infrastructures? (e.g. circularity, integrated networks of smaller, specialised, and flexible plants, local resources)
How will we design and maintain “soft” infrastructures—health, public safety, education—as more people converge in urban spaces in 2050?
How is the role and definition of infrastructure in society changing?
Who Builds the Futures?

As with each Collaborative Foresight Cycle, a broad section of the community comes together in seminars and workshops to scan the signals and trends of today, imagine a spectrum of tomorrows, and examine the ethical implications of what we’ve imagined. Then from the vantage point of our co-created futures, we’ll look backwards to unpack the relationships, skills, tools and strategies that need to be developed now to create the flourishing infrastructures of tomorrow.

The future is plural! We invite interested and creative minds of all levels of experience to join us for this Collaborative Foresight Cycle. We’re particularly interested in putting folks from the digital technologies and world-building space in the same room with materials experts, industrial designers, civil engineers, transportation sector planners, and landscape architects. You could be a UX researcher, a data scientist, an interaction designer, an artist, a community organiser, an activist, a psychologist, or a communications professional. No one is an expert in what our futures hold, and the more perspectives the better.

How to Collaborate: Join a community seminar, signal scan, or critique: You’ll gain new perspectives on the urgencies of the present and help scan for signals and trends. You can continue on your futures-thinking journey by coming to expert seminars, following along online, and wrapping up this cycle at a final book launch event.

Join Collaborative Foresight prototyping workshops: 15-20 Core Contributors with expertise and experience in the industry and topic to join four free foresight workshops, facilitated by our Collaborative Foresight team. We build prototypes of futures together, based on Core Contributors’ expertise and imagination about the topic: transformative ideas, approaches, tools, or projects looking at materials, manufacturing, hard, soft, or green infrastructures are welcome. You’ll get access to our unique method and tools for practising inclusive foresight, including signal scanning and scenario building. You’ll walk away with industry connections, skills and resources to bring futures-thinking and strategic foresight into your team, your organisation or practice.

How we Share:
We share the insights and ideas from each Collaborative Foresight Cycle in a final seminar and a final book. We’ll summarize the futures we’ve co-created in community, offer up reflections and insights from core contributors, and invite the community to continue to discourse in our next cycles at our annual gathering, The Conference.

How to Participate:

Core Contributor: Dive deeply into this topic as a member of a core group of changemakers. You’ll learn some new tools, gain skills and a supportive network to bring futures-thinking and strategic foresight into your work.
Community Collaborator: Join our public three hour long workshops to contribute to compact explorations of social gathering around sound and song, as viewed through the lens of the future. As a community collaborator, you’ll gain new perspectives on the urgencies of the present and help scan for signals and trends.

Core Group Dates:
Workshop 1: May 6 and 7 Workshop 2: May 27 and 28

This Collaborative Foresight Cycle is made possible by DigIT Hub. DigIT Hub Sweden help companies and the public sector in Southern Sweden digitalise. The initiative is co-funded by the European Union, Region Blekinge, Region Kronoberg, Region Skåne, and Vinnova.