Towards the planning of infrastructure renewal: an analysis of futures and institutions for a network-of-networks

A peak of ageing infrastructure networks increasingly threatens to severely disrupt society. Infrastructure failure may cascade between networks due to increasing interdependencies between networks. Hence, a negative perspective on ageing and interdependencies prevails. However, also opportunities may arise to adapt otherwise inert infrastructures to future societal desires by combining the renewal needs of multiple networks. Such network-of-network renewal opportunities employ the ageing of multiple co-located infrastructure networks for: cost-saving, coordinated spatial development, remediation of environmental impacts, enhanced economic conditions, enhanced societal value, and future-proofing infrastructures to serve society. However, infrastructure assets are commonly one-on-one replaced due to institutional frameworks that advocate a technical scope, an ad hoc and project-oriented focus, and a sectoral orientation. Therefore, this study investigates how infrastructure administrations can identify and seize network-of-networks renewal opportunities. The main research question is “how can infrastructure administrators effectively direct institutional change for infrastructure network-of-networks renewal that anticipates possible futures?” The findings show that infrastructure administrations lack a common ground – e.g., a common vision, planning approach, or renewal database. This inhibits them to systemically anticipate long-term futures and to identify network-of-networks renewal opportunities. Developing such a common ground encounters institutional barriers. These include the lack of a decision-making arena for network-of-networks renewal, the delaying and denying of choices, and the principle ‘he who pays the piper, calls the tune’. While practicing infrastructure renewal, decision-makers may zoom-in and zoom-out, and recognize their assets as a common in the network-of-networks instead of their own, and propagate divergent change: this is coined institutional orchestration.