The paralysis caused by COVID-19 has underlined how interconnection is the true key to mobility for people and goods, and how this in turn is the most important factor for growth.

For decades, studies have highlighted the correlation between the performance of an economy and the quality of its infrastructure, and now more than ever, strategic investments can be a formidable tool for recovery.

While in Italy this theme is represented in a dramatic manner by the gap between the north and the south (and to a lesser extent that between the country and the rest of Western Europe), there are many throughout the continent who are forced to deal with slowness and short-sightedness.

In particular, France, which usually focuses much attention on the geopolitical interpretation of reality, has for decades neglected the maintenance and construction of strategic infrastructure, and it is no surprise that this question has for months been a central point on the agenda at the Eliseo.

Investment in infrastructure now appears to be fundamental for three reasons: on the one hand it is a powerful countercyclical instrument, capable of leading to occupational and economic recovery in a moment in which consumption, exchanges and investments are approaching record lows.

On the other, it greatly improves the competitiveness of the country concerned, with widespread consequences in all areas of production and the market. Economic theory talks of the “multiplier effect”: any sum invested in infrastructure generates much higher economic return in terms of GDP and employment.
The perfect example? Roosevelt’s New Deal, the social, economic and legislative instrument that dragged the United States out of the Great Depression, drawing heavily on public funds and creating the networks that were to make it a global power.

While strategic works concern exports, infrastructure is a formidable driver for economic and cultural influence. In other words, soft power.

This is something that China knows very well, having invested a great deal in its colossal infrastructure strategy named the Belt Road Initiative - also known as the New Silk Route - and considered a move for global supremacy. It is no coincidence that the project has attracted forceful opposition from Trump, and from Obama before him.

However, the pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the ambitious plans of Beijing, forcing the work sites around the world to shut down and blocking the supply of materials.

The Belt Road crisis is further intensified by the Chinese hierarchical model, which relies on human resources and materials exported directly from the motherland rather than on delegation and local sourcing.

And there is more. Many countries, particularly in Africa, are currently in a state of crisis and therefore unable to honour their debts to China. This means that there is a real risk of the project being definitively abandoned.

The struggles of the physical Belt Road have not however slowed the actions of Xi Jinping’s government with regards to the theme of infrastructure, but rather have led to a shift to digital. While trying to export its soft power via the Trojan Horse of Huawei, Beijing is also making rapid progress in the satellite field with the expansion of the Beidou system created in 2000 as a response to American GPS technology.

The lockdown has in fact highlighted more or less everywhere how important digital infrastructure such as fibre optic networks and relay stations are and has underlined the weaknesses of so-called digital deserts. From a geopolitical point of view, the theme of data centre localisation and digital security is evermore unavoidable, as the 5G affair has so effectively demonstrated. 

In this context, the world of design is being called on to make a drastic change in gear. The new rules require for the overturning of the relationship between physical and digital infrastructure, with the first necessarily created in accordance with the second, and this latter needing to be oriented towards a reduction in consumption through big data and predictive algorithms.

Then there is the theme of sustainability, which is to be fully and unhesitatingly embraced in the sector of infrastructure, which is responsible for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions (due to both construction and operation).

A special role will be played by urban planners. According to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (UNDESA), over the next ten years the world population will grow from the current 7.5 billion to almost nine billion, and almost two thirds of people will live in urban areas.

If on the one hand increased density reduces the cost of infrastructure and services for citizens, on the other it represents a significant challenge for urban planners, who will have to avoid the trap of diseconomies of scale, bringing together economic, social and - as we are learning - health requirements.

Involving design specialists, representatives of social sciences, business, finance, institutions and third sector organisations in the debate, domusforum 2020 is aimed to provide a platform for exchange on this theme.

A search for consensus and consequently a path that will lead our society not only out of the pandemic but also beyond the hard to navigate waters of a social crisis in which it has been debating for some time and which the virus is rendering more pressing than ever.