Infrastructure planning in the UK – old and new stories

November 2010

An old story

• In the 1970s major shifts were made in the UK energy economy:– Gas from North Sea, including creation of

completely new distribution system.– Many nuclear power stations built.– Coal remaining as core fuel source.

• All state managed, with strong (spatial) planning involvement.

2010s and 2020s

• An even bigger energy system change now widely seen to be needed now, and similarly with transport, mainly to lower carbon.

• State levers are now mainly regulatory, and via (spatial) planning – though still own roads and, largely, rail tracks.

• How can it be done?

Difficult politics

• Overall a funnelling effect, so that there is less room for manoeuvre in choosing sites or routes – protection systems, heritage, consciousness of place, property rights etc.

• Politicians therefore under very strong pressures – planning in tight corners.

Difficult geographies

• For transport, the key remains the “axial belt” or “central constellation” cities link to south east – how to fit in more capacity for rail and freight.

• But also other pressure routes, and energy especially moving power from electricity generation off coasts.

• Devolved administrations (and the seas) have more of the sort of “easier” space most European states have.

Necessary ingredients of solutions1

• National agreement, worked up by consistently led national debate on new geography, related to economic bases of the country: unless people can see the sense, these schemes will not be accepted. Requires consistent low carbon drive from government.

• A national development strategy – for a private economy: rethinking of state role.

Necessary ingredients of solutions2

• Long term alliances with the core infrastructure corporations who will build and run most of this: established by effective regulatory machine building trust over generations and new powers to ensure corporations not taken over all the time.

• New state arrangements across all infrastructure industries – beyond the privatisation and/or competition model, which cannot possibly bring these changes. So the key is in changing the whole model, not in spatial planning.

Conclusions 1

• Clearly an ideological problem, not a technical or geographical one.

• But EU and current ideologies do not allow the above solutions.

• Simply needs to be argued for – signs that many do understand that most of infrastructure industries are not working well.

Conclusions 2

• The larger part would still be changing the whole system more radically, to stop economic growth and move to managed consumption model.

• But this is even more implausible within a capitalist system.

• Nevertheless all the obvious measures of societal efficiency (energy, transport, waste, water) should be the other main drive, of greater importance than above discussion of infrastructure.