Preprint
Unshackling Infrastructure Strategy from Neolithic Ideologies: Embracing Futures and Foresight for Sustainable Coexistence
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) , Vol.23 October 2024
Elsevier
2024
Abstract
While infrastructure supports human well-being, it is also highly consumptive. This study investigates how infrastructure strategy-making remains entrenched in Neolithic-era paradigms, combining literature review with participatory futures workshops involving 61 infrastructure professionals across seven countries. A macrohistorical analysis reveals how civilisations evolved through reliance on surpluses driving population expansion and fortification against threats. The research's empirical findings demonstrate limited awareness of these historical influences among infrastructure professionals, with participants initially rating policymakers' consideration of macrohistorical perspectives at 3.23/10. However, once aware of these connections, participants rated the importance of historical perspective at 6.64/10, highlighting the value of historical context in strategic planning. Contemporary infrastructure strategy relies on empirical data-based projections, which the research proposes are increasingly unsuited to addressing sustainability challenges. Ideologies dominated by an extraction-growth paradigm have weighed on infrastructure planning approaches for millennia. New methods of considering alternative futures have become necessary, particularly approaches that foster a post-colonial-like relationship with nature. It is argued that reducing biological material flows to infrastructure and adopting futures and foresight techniques could enable sustainable human-nature cohabitation in the post-Anthropocene epoch. This research demonstrates the urgent need to unshackle infrastructure planning from historical paradigms to better serve both civilisation and our biosphere.
Details
- Title
- Unshackling Infrastructure Strategy from Neolithic Ideologies: Embracing Futures and Foresight for Sustainable Coexistence
- Authors
- Richard MacGeorge (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
- Publication details
- Social Science Research Network (SSRN) , Vol.23 October 2024
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.2139/ssrn.4996905
- ISSN
- 1556-5068
- Organisation Unit
- School of Law and Society
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991083397602621
- Output Type
- Preprint
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