Today's discussion on how do we define infrastructure and infrastructure projects and the 6 parameters we look for (Public use, Economic development, capital assets, Network/System, Lifestyle optimization, Service) in infrastructure made me want to dig a bit deeper into what this meant in real life- what array of projects did it actually encompass.
For an Indian perspective, it is easy for us to come up with examples such as a well connected metro system, an intelligent transportation system, drinking water in pipelines and several others discussed in class.
But this, to me, sounded like a rudimentary understanding highly biased to the Indian context and developing nations in general.
I started looking for examples from places quite different from the Indian sub-continent and came up with two such examples, one from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the other from Pennsylvania, USA.
Here they are in a bit more detail-
1. Kibera is a slum in Nairobi with over 200,000 (estimates have also placed it at close to 500,000) inhabitants spanning 13 villages and 2.5 square kilometers. The attached video shows how Open Street Maps, a Volunteered Geographic Information platform helped in defining the area of Kibera and hence forcing the government to recognize this informal settlement (watch before proceeding).
On watching this video, two things immediately stood out for me-
- Though the people were as backward as they get and skeptical in the beginning, once they realized that the mapping exercise was only directed only towards their welfare, public participation was effectively mobilized.
- Technology was able to map the area with quite a level of detail at a high rate (3 weeks sounds impressive). It provided the people the ability to navigate, a fundamental and very important aspect of infrastructure, one which most of us take for granted today.
Once the area was mapped out, the facets of an infrastructure project were easily visible- public use, safety, economic development, lifestyle optimization and more. So simple navigation and mapping should also comprise an infrastructure project(?)
2. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA-
Here is an example from a region with an advanced network of roads, water and sanitation, medical care, social infrastructure etc. A completely different definition of an infrastructure project is shown by this example.
Sustainability is one of the chief concerns of today's development. UPS Drivers is a company that hires 60000 drivers. If technology helps them save 1 mile per driver per day, they end up saving 20 million miles a year, 2 million gallons of fuel, 20,000 metric tonnes of carbon into the air and a lot of worn-out tires.
Here is a video in this context-
After watching these examples(and others), there are a few possible conclusions that I have drawn-
- Infrastructure planning in the future is going to be a much more involved process with a lot of public participation. With growing social media such as Flickr and FourSquare, it has become possible to get answers to questions such as 'Which is the most happening place in the city on a Saturday night?' or 'How do tourists explore a city and how is it different from local people on a vacation? How can we improve their experience based on how the city talks back to us?'
- Technology is going to be a big driving force in the development of infrastructure
- Infrastructure is going to develop a 'soft' component (will social media platforms also form a part of infrastructure?). In addition to being 'soft', it is also likely to be interactive with technologies such as Google glass.
- The 'hard' component of infrastructure will undoubtedly continue but will be more efficient based on the feedback from the 'soft' component.
- If introduced appropriately to the under-developed areas, technology will lead to a growth rate which will be higher than ever before.
For me, exploring several example of infrastructure drove home to point of infrastructure being a service rather than a physical entity. Will love to hear a lot more views on this!
