How shifting concepts and fuzzy borders encourage new solutions for infrastructure provision in the 21st century

Abstract: As the Next Generation Infrastructure research community is expanding across the globe, it is time to reflect on the meaning of infrastructure to people in different cultures and on users’ expectations of infrastructure services in different societies at different stages of economic development. Can infrastructure development in today’s fast growing economies be compared with the development of infrastructure in the Western world, where many of today’s infrastructure systems evolved over decades and centuries? How have historic visions of society and societal needs in Western societies shaped infrastructure development? Can today’s infrastructure development in Western and other societies be related to similar visions and strategies, or do we see new interpretations of the concept of infrastructure and new infrastructure development models being brought into being? The relevance of these questions is aggravated by the rapid urbanisation worldwide and the increasing stress on 20 Join the conversation on Twitter with #isngi2013 natural resources. Just expanding our legacy infrastructure systems is unlikely to be the best strategy to support the surging urban population in the megalopolises of the future and the dwindling rural population. Today’s planning and design choices will determine whether tomorrow’s infrastructure systems will enable or inhibit a sustainable development of societies across the globe, and to what extent we can ensure livelihoods for all, while safeguarding the livability of cities and the quality of the natural environment. We will explore how national governments and infrastructure providers navigate the multi-scale and cross-sectoral governance reality of infrastructure systems in response to the challenges of the 21st century, and how bottom-up initiatives add their own dynamics to the picture. We will reflect on the potential of translating best practices across cultural borders