Approaching Future Flight: Urban Life and Design in the Drone Age

From infrastructure inspection and commercial delivery to emergency services, drones increasingly feature in UK skies. Drones are celebrated as enabling diverse urban applications and are popularly associated with economic, social, and sustainability benefits. Yet, while a 2022 UK Government ambition statement outlines aims for commercial drones to be ‘commonplace by 2030’, it remains that urban air mobility technologies including drones variously impact urban populations and built environments. Data-capturing drones prompt concerns around privacy, visual and noise pollution. Further, the drone’s reliance on digital and physical infrastructures, from air traffic management to routing, landing pads and logistics spaces, raises timely and critical questions about the volumetric design and planning of the built environment. Through the case of ‘Project Skyway’, the world’s longest proposed and presently under-development drone-highway connecting 165-miles of airspace above six UK towns and cities, this chapter bring into dialogue urban and political geographies with design scholarship to critically interrogate urban life and design in the drone age.