From Ancient Ruins to Future Cities: Infrastructure in Perspective – Scarcity, Technology and Proximity

By Adam Schwartman 

On a recent trip to Cambodia, I had an opportunity to see the sun rise over the remains of Angkor Wat, the 12th century temple complex in what was once Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire. Observing the ruined infrastructure of a past civilization, I found myself wondering if the people who inhabited this ancient kingdom understood the processes that would eventually change their world beyond recognition, shifting the regional center of gravity elsewhere.  

Today, you can see that kind of change almost in real time, rather than centuries.  

Bangkok – one of the new centers of gravity of southeast Asia, and the city where I currently live – like many Asian cities, has seen an incredible growth in infrastructure. Pictures of the city from 20 years ago are unrecognizable.  

Looking back on that that sunrise in Angkor, and reflecting on my time in Bangkok and 20 years of working in power, transport, telecoms, utilities and cities, I wonder if in centuries to come, it will be said that we really understood the major forces and processes that are shaping our age, and the infrastructure through which we support our lives.  

What can I say that I have seen, perched on the edge of the early Twenty-First Century?  

Here are a few organizing ideas. Three themes – in short, Scarcity, Technology and Proximity 

What about sustainability? From my perspective, the sustainability agenda is a response to the growing awareness of our planet's finite resources or, put another way, scarcity. It appears that, over the past two decades or so, humanity has increasingly recognized the limitations of our environment. We are facing challenges such as limited water supplies, diminishing arable land, the need to reduce carbon emissions, and concerns about ocean pollution. 

The impact of climate brought on by global warming is the most visible and dramatic factor that forces this reality on us.   

Ever alarming climate data and wildly devastating, repeating, seasonal catastrophes have forced people to rethink what it means for societies “to develop”. Infrastructure projects today bear the weight of these considerations – in terms of what we build (for example, renewables, not coal; rail not roads, recycling, not waste) and how we build it (taking into account energy efficiency, community impact, or future climate impacts). 

The second big force is technology. There has always been technological change, but that the pace of it is so fast, and so disruptive. I cannot imagine any other time when one could have so little idea of what the world will look like in 10 years, let alone 100.  

But one does not have to look that far into the future, or the past. Think of all the digital infrastructure that made it possible during COVID for hundreds of millions of people to continue to interact through computers and phones when we could not in person anymore. 

Infrastructure used to be a relatively stable set of industry sub-sectors. But technology has upended that.   

It is now in everything – not just the telecommunications revolution. It is in the systems that let you travel anywhere on a single token. That allow you to generate electricity on your own roof when you can and draw power from the grid when you need it. That find leaks in pipes remotely. That move containers around terminals on driverless cabs that optimize their storage with AI. That integrate warehouse logistics with businesses and almost remove the need to hold inventory.  

The third force that is altering the world is human population change – growth and  distribution, including increases in numbers and movements, sometimes across borders, but not always.   

But it is not just the movements themselves. Rather, it is what these movements in population lead to. And that is proximity. Between people, but as much between the different ideas, identities and stories of which people are the carriers.  

Of course, as a species, we have always been on the move. Starting sixty thousand years ago, when we spread out from Africa. Major population movements have defined our histories and identities, from the Israelites to the Moguls to the victims of the Middle Passage.  

What seems so different now, from the past, is the scale and speed – the absolute numbers of human beings moving around the planet, into concentrations greater than anything we have seen in the past, over such large distances in such short time, along so many different routes.  

These movements decide where human beings will build their cities, their roads, their electricity networks, their ports, what they transport, in turn driven by what we make and sell, all intertwined with how and what we learn, how we meet our basic and less basic needs, how we save, invest and spend.     

All of this raises the question not only where we will be, but who we will be. I imagine those two points will increasingly become different aspects of the same phenomenon.  

As for where we will be? More and more of us in cities, especially mega-cities. Many of us in huge conurbations, some of which – like the Greater Bay Area in southeast China – are currently home to populations as great as 75 million people.  

Regionally, however, that future growth will be less China-centric . Increasingly it will be in Africa and South Asia. Nine countries are expected to account for most of global population growth by 2050 – two in South Asia (India and Pakistan), seven in Africa (Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia).  

But what interests me more than the physical agglomeration itself, is what it creates. Which is proximity. Which comes with new communities, ideas and identities that shift what people think and what they make.  

Proximity is not just about physical movement. Many of the impacts that used to come through the physical proximity of people, now also happen through virtual proximity – as we increasingly communicate and engage with each other on the same electronic platforms (and in a smaller number of languages) no matter what part of the planet we happen to be on.  

This in turn requires a whole different world of digital infrastructure – the new nervous system that quietly joins up billions of individuals across the planet.  

All of which is a very long distance to the ruins of Angkor Wat.  

These forces, will continue to affect different people differently.  

Humanity as a whole has not faced scarcity on a global level before quite in the way that we do now. Yet huge numbers of people on the planet have never known anything but scarcity.  

Access to new technology may be more widespread in even the poorest corner of our planet, and in really encouraging ways. But that is only a small piece of the story, and access to technology and its benefits is still hugely uneven.  

Different experiences afford different perspectives. The patterns look different, depending on where and how you look.  

How we perceive and work towards tackling the major processes we face today is informed by this much bigger picture and will  determine how we respond. Time will tell.  

For an expanded consideration of these themes, please click here.