Only an approach founded on rights and obligations can allow for effective and legitimate public infrastructure provision

On Monday 23 March 2015, Dialogue by Design and the UCL Transport Institute co-hosted a seminar, We Need to Talk about Infrastructure, chaired by Jim Steer of Steer Davies Gleave. We posed a simple question: when Government plans to invest £375 billion in infrastructure projects up to 2020, how can this be done with local communities, rather than against them? Elena de Besi argues that only an approach to infrastructure that is founded on the rights and obligations we have as members of a society would allow for the provision of infrastructure that is effective, timely and built on public legitimacy.