Editorial

The four papers in this issue were either written before Covid 19 arrived or as it became a pandemic. However, as societies recover from the devastating effects of the virus, and economies restructure to protect public health, it is all the more worthwhile to reflect, as the papers in this issue do, on the wider and longer turn consequences of past infrastructure practices, and to propose changes to improve environmental, social and economic outcomes.

Mega Infrastructure projects emerge from and are embedded in human societies. All too often the discourse about such projects fails to give proper recognition to fundamental questions of socio-political purpose and governance which lie at the heart of the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The authors of the articles in this issue unravel some of the complexity and political sensitivity of the social context of mega infrastructure projects.

As Dimitriou and Field argue in this JMI&SD Issue, mega infrastructure projects are ‘agents of change’. They are not politically neutral responses to some kind of assumed market demand. They change the societies and environments into which they are projected. They are intended to do so, and they are ‘sold’ to the public as solutions to social problems, whether the problem be traffic congestion, poor quality roads, failing electricity supply networks, unsafe and insufficient water supply, inadequate housing, educational and health facilities, or high carbon emissions. They respond to public beliefs and public fears.

The authors draw attention to ‘the power of context’: the changing societal context over the long term, the varying cultural and institutional contexts of different nations and regions around the world, and the shifting ideological context. Ideology is, in Piketty’s words, ‘An attempt to respond to a broad set of questions concerning the desirable or ideal organisation of society’ (Piketty 2020, 3). As the world seeks the means of economic recovery from Covid 19 at the same time as combatting global heating, we cannot afford to ignore the fundamental social and environmental questions of public planning.

Dimitriou and Field open the discussion of mega infrastructure to these questions, matters of social justice, economic organisation and environmental sustainability written, for instance, into the reports of the United Nations. Thus, when planning infrastructure, it is necessary to differentiate the frequently opposing demands of sustaining the environment, maintaining social justice and cohesion, and promoting economic growth. And we need to differentiate among the varying infrastructure needs of different nations with different levels of affluence and poverty, and different institutional systems. The problematic nature of ‘contagion’ of ideas about transport infrastructure from global to local levels, and affluent to poorer nations was demonstrated by Imran (2010) for the case of transport infrastructure decision-making in Pakistan.

There is powerful advocacy for mega infrastructure projects as Dimitriou and Field show. Astronomical sums for physical infrastructure are projected to be necessary to promote economic growth and enhanced productivity. But these authors question whether the metric of ‘infrastructure gap’ is fit for purpose, and conclude that it is not. They argue that unless the global infrastructure strategy is reframed in line with 21^st Century challenges – to include holistic criteria informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals – it will only add massively to infrastructure’s carbon footprint.

Optimism bias, as is well known, exists in the advocacy of infrastructure projects: underestimating costs and risks, underestimating time in construction, and exaggerating benefits. Less well known is the tendency for problems which infrastructure projects are designed to address to be generated in parallel with the infrastructure ‘solution’. There exists, ‘a circular logic through which the construction of the project becomes the only solution to a problem’ as the paper by Pittman and Day in this Issue illustrates. The authors show how the ‘problem-solution nexus’ developed in the generation of a mega transport project in Melbourne, Australia. The existence of a problem-solution nexus subverts the logic of planning in which the need for an infrastructure project is predicated upon prior analysis of the whole transportation system and its requirements for social welfare and environmental sustainability.

As Greiman and Sclar argue in their paper, when it comes to planning and post hoc evaluation of projects, what ultimately counts is their contribution to the connectivity of the socio-economic network. In lay terms, the particular value that great cities create is that of connecting people efficiently to jobs, people to people, producers to consumers, suppliers to producers. As the authors write, ‘It is the externalities of the overall newly enhanced network that creates the value, not the singularity of the individual item of infrastructure within the network’. They show that we can learn more from a historical account of the creation of the communication network, and the project’s place in that history, than a narrow focus on the profitability or otherwise of the individual project.

Much discourse about mega infrastructure hinges on the problems and opportunities of projects in the developed world. We often see ‘need’ conflated with ‘demand’. But what of the needs of the peoples of developing countries? Of these, as Aizawa reminds us, ‘2.2 billion lack access to safe drinking water, 4.2 billion lack access to sanitation, 940 million lack electricity, and 1 billion lack access to all-weather roads’. Those needs are not expressed as ‘demand’ because the people are poor. Individually they cannot pay for what they need.

Unquestionably the biggest global mega infrastructure programme currently being promoted today is China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Parts of that programme are directed to the needs of the developing world. However, infrastructure, especially transport infrastructure, has historically almost always been connected with the political purpose of projecting geo-political influence. Japan, like Australia, finds itself in the midst of geo-political competition between the United States and China. So it is of critical importance for recipient agencies to assess mega infrastructure projects against clear criteria of ‘quality’. Aizawa cites the positive example of the five ‘Ise-Shima Principles for Promoting Quality Infrastructure Investment’ which were formulated for the G7 under Japanese leadership.

There is, of course, a deeper question behind all the arguments advanced in this issue of the journal, one that will increasingly preoccupy scholars in the face of the weakness of social values of the democracies in the face of crises: environmental, economic and most recently of public health. How well does neoliberalism serve as the ethical foundation of democracy?

Beginning with the Mont Pèlerin project initiated by Friedrich Hayek, the term neoliberalism embodies the principle that the means of co-ordinating the economic activities of society should be the market, with intervention by the state only when necessary to maintain the rule of law, guarantee fair competition, and provide the conditions of a decent society which cannot be provided by private enterprise. The potential for intervention by the state to respond to need has been discouraged at best, and at worst, ruled out.

The enactment of neoliberalism varies greatly amongst different nations, particularly in terms of the balance between the rule of the market and that of democracy. However, one feature commonly found across national contexts as disparate as the United States, Australia and Sweden has been the tendency to reduce the role of the public sector. In Australia, public service has been eviscerated. Indeed, one well informed political commentator argues cogently that ‘we have forgotten how to govern’ (Tingle 2015). Peter Hartcher (2019, 66), the political editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, argues: ‘The state, as an entity charged with conducting the rule of law, has been hollowed out. The people live under the assumption that their taxes, their elected representatives and their public servants are protecting them as the law guarantees. But in the industry after industry, this has been exposed as a hoax’. Such sentiments are echoed today by senior Australian politicians and economists.

Paradoxically, the ‘hollowing out’ of the state has led to a result which is exactly the opposite of what Hayek and the Mont Pèlerin Society desired. The neoliberal mantra has led to the empowerment of politicians over their disinterested public service advisors who have frequently been replaced by consultants and ‘political advisors’ with media expertise. In infrastructure decision-making in Australia, there is the close collaboration between politicians and private sector transport infrastructure monopolies: so close as to merit the term ‘clientelism’, in which decisions flow from collaborative arrangements between the political tier of government and corporate monopolies. In Hayek’s view, this was the worst of all possible worlds. So today we even have to question how liberal is neoliberalism? The rule of law, indeed democracy itself, requires a well-resourced, permanent, highly skilled and ethical corps of public servants, distanced from the exigencies of everyday politics and capable of speaking truth to power.

Nicholas P. Low
Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
[email protected]