The Digital and the Physical
One of the abiding lessons of the coronavirus pandemic has been the need for a blend of digital and physical infrastructure, allowing us to access work and leisure in a fluid, flexible, and multidimensional way.
Both physical and digital infrastructure needs to be sufficient to match moments of peak demand, with people in the Arc having the assurance that, just as the train, busway or autonomous shuttle will be running reliably enough to get them to work on time, superfast broadband and 5G will also be able to connect them seamlessly from wherever they may choose to work remotely. Removing the element of doubt from the commute, or the telecommute, will be a key part of how we harness the positive changes in the nature of work which have followed from the pandemic. Here the public sector can use its infrastructure and strategic planning ability to support the other points of the triple helix, with a government report estimating that £75 billion of additional GDP has been generated through the democratisation of 4G network between 2010 and 2020.
We have seen a sea-change in opinion and attitudes towards innovative and efficient modes of work, which can also contribute to improved wellbeing and satisfaction. The TUC estimates that the average commuter now spends nine days a year commuting using inefficient transport infrastructure – and just as workplaces have increasingly adapted to flexible modes of working, we have to ensure investment in connective capital has equal flexibility in combining physical with digital infrastructure. We cannot continue to view digital and physical infrastructure as separate issues or even two sides of the same coin, but rather fundamentally and inseparably linked.
In March 2021, the government’s Project Speed taskforce identified the Oxford-Cambridge Arc as one of a number of high-profile ‘pathfinder projects’, underlining its importance as a region with a regionally-focussed approach to supercharging growth in the UK economy. The Arc is the source of much of the UK’s innovation in the digital space, and stands not only to contribute in an incredibly concentrated way to further development in technological solutions to future problems, but to benefit from increased consideration of digital infrastructure as just as vitally important as the physical. When conceptualising the Arc, there has been an evident sea change from National Infrastructure Commission’s emphasis purely on an expressway and physical infrastructure, to an increased awareness of digital connectivity in a post-pandemic climate.
Beyond connective capital alone, considering digital and physical infrastructure as fundamentally interlinked can help the investment in all aspects of the ‘capital’ concept which underpins this Manifesto’s vision for the future of the Arc.
Sensor technology and digital replicas of buildings like those used by Boeing and Tesla can collect data on real-time energy usage and automatically adjust to optimise performance, allowing us to preserve and conserve natural capital. By digitally mapping the Arc’s natural capital infrastructure, we could better illustrate visually how new development patterns would affect natural capital assets and the associated costs and benefits. Just as digital and physical infrastructure works seamlessly together through the smart city concept, natural capital can be grown by the combination of physical and digital infrastructure working to relay the environmental sustainability data of the built environment across the Arc.