Infrastructure and spatial planning - Analysis

1. Infrastructure and spatial planning - Analysis November 2009

2. Contents • General understandings • Specific features • Institutional design (strategies and projects) • Imaginaries and state spatial projects • European Union dimensions

3. The big picture • Standard theory of two eras, Keynesian to 1980s, and neoliberal since then. • Clearly has powerful explanatory force. • But always have to look both at geographical and historical specificities and at the specialness of infrastructure.

4. Special aspects of infrastructure • Special features brought out by range of theorists, e.g. Harvey and Helm. • Capitalism finds infrastructure difficult, but needs it; neoliberal capitalism finds especially difficult. • This is for old reasons – big and risky, infrastructure is spatially and temporally difficult. • Helm justifies his infrastructure programme from productivity or factors of production perspective – UK falls behind on this analysis.

5. Specific features 1 • Infrastructure moments – big forces come through variably in each country, e.g on rail systems, or aviation, or energy arrangements. • So although some tendency for an infrastructuralist moment to come up in every European case in recent years, takes different forms, and intensities, depending on sectors. • In UK the moment was late 1990s to 2010 but especially c 2005-2008.

6. Specific features 2 • Geographies havepowerful influence – obvious, but useful to bring out. • Geographical concentration index an example – states (and continents) have variably dispersed urbanisation – Australia high, France low. Affects infrastructure needs. • Global (and continental) positioning matters – relation to sea (port ranges) or to aviation hubs. • Many more examples, and continuously evolving.

7. OECD geographical concentration index

8. Specific features 3 • Politics, including the form of neoliberalism in each country, how far contested, and the strength of green movements over decades. • The forms of states within which these work, including constitutions (especially federal, unitary etc), party systems and pressure group or lobby politics.

9. Institutional design • How are planning and governing systems set up to deal with infrastructure decisions? • Divided simply into two parts, strategies and projects.

10. Institutional design - strategies • Strategies – analysis of national spatial strategies, of national sectoral strategies, and of no strategies systems. • Analysis of territorial articulation of systems, mainly interplay of national and regional (did not do work on local level). • Strong sectoral variation. Some are typically very localised (waste) – but this is always deliberately framed this way.

11. Reminder on invisible strategic work • Spatial framings are always constructed. • UK history - the way this happened with the motorway system – worked up over decades, to implicit plan – versus rail, where Beeching moment was the only plan within long set of gradual reorderings. • Or waste, decisions spatially delegated to localities, but with central steers encouraging spatial solutions.

12. Institutional design - projects • Projects – common features from EU membership (EIA etc), and from globalisation and Europeanisation pressures of business – to make more predictable and faster. • Concern with project speed and decision certainty correlates mainly with privatisation dynamic in each country. • So only UK-England has made root and branch reform. Other countries/regions have made more modest reforms, though of significance. • Netherlands unusual in making biggest projects national schemes. • France unusual in public debates system of non binding early form.

13. Institutional design overall • End result – Dutch system appears best, though the Dutch are heavily critical. Scotland may move in that direction with experience. • Mixed systems of France, Germany and Spain all have strong points, though no easily replicable features. • UK-England system could have merit, if run properly, but not much sign that sectoral strategy side will be very advanced in early days. • UK-England project side may evolve towards good practices, time will show.

14. National imaginaries and state spatial projects 1 • I still see effective analysis of these features as central to output of research. • But far from clear the methods used were up to dealing with this effectively. • May be scope for further more carefully designed research later.

15. UK high level spatial planning • The absence of such planning has been a main feature since 1945. • Two periods of regional planning have been the exceptions, in the 1960s-70s, and 1990s-2000s. • But this regional planning has been only partially linked to planning of major infrastructure

16. National level thinking • This means that the way national spatial change and relationships are implicitly conceptualised and constructed becomes of central importance. • Just as locally and regionally, it is clear national decision makers of all kinds do have structuring ideas of territories, however disjointed

17. National imaginaries and state spatial projects 2 • For the moment – each country has an idea of its future, or at least elites do. • These are partly spatialised, and inform “non spatial” policy domains, if unconsciously. • Famous UK examples, north south differences, urban and rural, positioning in relation to Europe. • This intersects with the state spatial projects (Brenner), which have been towards less equal national treatment across the national territories – most so in UK-England.

18. The real NPF 2011 • South of England has priority. • HSR2 abandoned, all London airports to expand. • Energy upgrades only for southern areas. • Plans for low carbon path abandoned, as incompatible with market led, slimmed state model. • Housing growth areas retained in south east, otherwise for local decisions.

19. Why there will be no (real) UK-England NPF • Politically it will always be too difficult. • Admission of spatial public investment patterns into the future would be damaging, especially after first year of a parliament. • One value of localist rhetoric, this can make the large national and regional decisions less visible.

20. European and EU dimensions • Of increasing importance. • Before very recently, was mainly about non spatial aspects (pro privatisation and liberalisation, EIA etc). • Now with revision of TEN-T and of TEN-E and other energy arrangements, may well become nearer to some sort of multinational planning model.

21. TEN-T • Ran 1994-2010 as bundle of EU validated projects, presented by states as priorities, tied together at borders. • Now proposed that should be more strategic, as necessary to hit other targets (security of supply, low carbon). • Too early still to say, but may well start filling some of the strategic gap, especially in central band of Europe (?less so on western fringes like us and Iberia). • Example would be better coordination of east-west and north-south freight systems.

22. Promoting a central European axis

23. Alternative north south central European routes

24. Completing north-south rail routes

25. TEN-E and energy as a whole 1 • Making of new energy infrastructure instrument proposed for 2011, after 2 years work. • Relates to third energy package (full liberalisation). • Realisation that separation of generation and transmission problematic – stops effective planning.

26. ENTSO-E long term planning 2010

27. ENTSO-G, existing gas pipelines

28. TEN-E and energy as a whole 2 • So – will EU take stronger lead? – already apparent in some regional projects, in Baltic zone, in North Sea (supergrid) and in Mediterranean. Also beyond EU borders. • Will be controversial – could threaten power of the liberalised corporations, now the forces in Europe on energy, more than governments. • But some states (Nl, Germany) very aware of strategic void created, virtual impossibility of present system delivering on desired goals. • Experts like Helm calling for strong EU system for some time, to match the “new paradigm”.

29. Overview on analysis • Hardly a general theory of infrastructure creating, governing and planning. • Russian doll system – planning within the governing within the provisioning. • But complexity as always on state theory – interrelations of powers and scales in a liberalised infrastructure landscape. • Not surprising that planning stutters or struggles for coherence.