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

From infrastructure inspection to emergency services, drones increasingly feature in UK skies. Drones are celebrated as enabling diverse applications and are associated with social, economic, and sustainability benefits. To this end, a 2022 UK Government ambition statement outlined aims for commercial drones to be ‘commonplace by 2030’. While the majority of operations are conducted by ground-based operators and flown within Visual Line of Sight, appetite is growing for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flight, which does not require visual reference and relies on alternative operational mitigations for collision avoidance. Following the association of BVLOS with economic and efficiency opportunities, initiatives such as ‘Project Skyway’, the world’s longest BVLOS drone superhighway poised to connect 165-miles of airspace above six UK towns and cities, have emerged. Through the lens of Project Skyway, this chapter examines diverse understandings of future flight by unpacking different methods deployed in its investigation. From routinised drones prompting visual and noise disruption concerns to the drone’s reliance on digital and physical infrastructures, such emergent and anticipated Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) technologies are variously poised to impact urban populations and built environments, and can be fruitfully interrogated at the interdisciplinary intersection of geography and design.