Is 2026 the year the UK adopts flexible demand-led design enabled by digital technologies to provide better public services?

In 2025, Shanghai expanded its new "customised" (dingzhi or DZ) bus system. Here, passengers - not planners - propose new bus routes via an online platform. Once a route meets a minimum demand threshold (typically 15-20 passengers per trip), it is approved and can start within days. A fixed public service shifts to one shaped by real-time need.

What if apparently rigid public infrastructure, from transport to streets, could quickly adapt to meet people’s needs? Creative use of technology and design is helping to make this more common.

Adaptive public transport is not limited to China. In the UK, WestLink provides a bus service without a fixed timetable for much of the west of England, which can be booked online or by phone. The new Bus Services Act may let local authorities set up bus firms that offer similar services.

Public infrastructure typically comprises things that communities share, like public transport, streets and public spaces, or utilities like energy and water. Efforts to make these more flexible go beyond transport.

For example, the German town of Bad Hersfeld has been experimenting with handing control over street lights to residents who have been given the opportunity to make the lights outside their bedroom window less bright or turn up lamps when on an evening stroll. AI settles clashes between competing requests and restricted settings block unsafe adjustments. The scheme has made lights more adaptable and cut energy use.

In Sweden, the national museum ArkDes and design agency LundbergDesign have rethought city streets. Together they prototyped a modular wooden base plate with adaptable parts to accommodate amenities such as cycle racks, outdoor gyms, seating or planter boxes. The system is flexible like Lego and can be installed in a few hours. It makes the layout of streets more adjustable, and helps to test and learn if the street meets the needs of users before costly ground works.

Of course, adaptive public infrastructure is not new. Take, for example, mobile health screening units and mobile libraries, which have run since at least the mid-19th century. The change today lies in digital technology and agile service design that allow fast, ongoing feedback to inform continual improvement and local tailoring. This is more than just automatic responses to sensor data or one-off consultations. People can now consciously shape the spaces and services around them day by day.

Rising demand for more tailored services may help explain the renewed interest. So might the limits of public space - in some places, there has been pushback against street clutter like disused phone boxes or dumped e-bikes. Tighter public budgets also drive the search for more efficient use of resources, such as offering services only when people want them.

There are drawbacks. Many forms of adaptive public infrastructure rely on digital technologies, which not everyone finds easy to use. Others welcome the predictability of traditional services. Laws may also introduce complexity - the 2025 Bus Services Act, which protects key routes from sudden cuts, may limit full customisation.

Public infrastructure is often seen as being hard and inflexible. And this is mostly true for things like roads and bridges. Yet, as the Shanghai buses show, many parts of public infrastructure are more malleable than they first appear. Digital technologies and agile service design are allowing continuous, rapid and direct feedback that lets citizens shape the public world around them. In time, we might all get buses when we need them rather than three at once.