Moving Stuff Around

Starting with the basics of infrastructure, Chapter 2 shows how it un-levels the playing field, making distant places ‘close’ and near places ‘far away’. Digital networks are obviously a focus, but so too are transportation and other less glamorous systems. Networks which ‘equalise’ space exert a centrifugal force on activity and growth, spinning it outward, deconcentrating the urban form. The nodal networks tend to reinforce concentration, pulling growth in a ‘centripetal’ way towards the best-connected central places. So infrastructure networks create a ‘surface’ across which locational choices are made, reflecting the interactions between cost, speed, bandwidth, connectivity and convenience. Firms’ and households’ locational choices emerge from the degree of flexibility they have in terms of the connectivity they rely on. But which connectivity? Not every business needs every network. That leads on to subsequent chapters’ analysis of the specific mix of types of mobility and access that firms need, for the markets they serve and the deals they do.