Humanising Movement Infrastructure: The Case for a Golden Thread
Written by Adam Scott, Experience Foundation.
Earlier in the year, I found myself in rooms around the world - from a lecture theatre with 300 people at the Interchange Conference in Manchester, to a very long white paper table cloth stretched across Kafeneion in Melbourne. At Kafeneion, amidst the Greek delicacies, everyone drew their own stories, diagrams, and notes across the paper. At the end, we drew one long bold line from one end to the other. That line became our Golden Thread - a simple, vivid reminder that even in the messiest, most fragmented projects, there is a way to hold the story together, keep the promise alive, and guide teams toward a shared purpose.
Whether airports or stations, engineers or operators, policymakers or service teams, the challenge is universal: passengers’ expectations are growing ever more acute, yet the process from strategy through design, construction, and operations is increasingly fragmented. What is needed is a Golden Thread - a unifying discipline that runs across Plan, Programme, and Place, keeping the narrative coherent and the traveller experience central.
We’ve seen it in practice. Melbourne Airport’s Little Book of Gold distills complexity into a compact, living guide, aligning teams and reinforcing the traveler promise across time and space. The Golden Thread is the bigger frame around that: the ongoing guardianship that ensures strategy, culture, and operations are integrated into a coherent whole.
Introducing the Golden Thread - Three Strategic Themes
Before diving into the themes, consider the Golden Thread from a board-level perspective. It is not just a metaphor; it is a governance tool. It ensures that every project is commercially astute, socially useful, and continually improving. It gives leaders and teams a single line of sight across complex projects, so investments in time, capital, and people all reinforce a unified promise.
1. Traveller-Centred Strategy - Plan / Vision The traveller is the North Star. This theme frames strategy and planning, aligning diverse teams around a single purpose: delivering an experience that is meaningful, seamless, and memorable. Every decision - from policy and funding to design priorities - orbits the traveller promise.
2. Culture of Stewardship - Programme / People Strategy only works when it is lived. Stewardship embeds ownership and capability into culture, creating a framework in which staff, partners, and operators consistently uphold and improve the experience. The Golden Thread is woven into every role, every routine, and every decision.
3. Agile Place-Making - Place / Operations Infrastructure is never static. Agile Place-Making ensures the traveller experience works in real time, even amid construction, disruption, or evolving infrastructure. By designing operations and spaces that are flexible, resilient, and responsive, the Golden Thread ties every moment of the experience together.
The Golden Thread in Practice - Three Tactical Moves
Just as strategy has three pillars, delivery follows three complementary moves, each corresponding to a project phase:
1. Ignition & Alignment Workshops - Early Phase Visioning sessions, team workshops, and stakeholder alignment exercises ensure everyone understands the traveller promise, the strategic intent, and their individual role in upholding it.
2. Integrative Briefing & Experience Review Gateways - Middle Phase Structured checkpoints and integrative briefings weave multiple workstreams into a coherent whole, ensuring design, programme, and operations remain true to the Golden Thread.
3. Continuous Feedback & Iterative Optimization - Post-Launch / Operations Observation, measurement, and iterative adjustments ensure the vision is realized in practice, allowing teams to refine the experience, respond to real-world conditions, and continuously enhance the system.
A Rallying Cry
The future of every airport, station, or transport hub is defined not by infrastructure alone, but by the human experience it enables. Integrating, improving, and innovating with every step forward - that is the Golden Thread. It holds the line across strategy, culture, and operations; it connects every individual involved to a shared cause; and it ensures every moment in movement infrastructure feels seamless, considered, and human.
From a white-table cloth in Melbourne to stations and airports around the world, the lesson is the same: hold the Golden Thread, and the experience will follow. Because experience is not an afterthought - it is the foundation, the missing discipline in city-making.
Many thanks to all those luminaries who have been part of the conversation >>
Adriano Denni, Mark Wolfe, Wendi Pearce, Steven Borin, Nicholas Donovan, Jim Parashos, Lorie Argus, Justin Portelli, Andrew Gardiner, Dan Robinson, Rianna Stanwell, Hiro Aso, Ross Powell, Elizabeth Ramani Armstrong, Lauren Blakely, Tom Shield, Heath Gledhill, Helena Huws, Rebecca Foy, Rebecca Cunningham, Michael Jarvis, Claire Donnellan, Anna Fantoni, Kate Bartel, Nik Killis, Julia Mahoney, Bree Trevena, Paul Duboc, Zoe Toogood, Ian Steedman, Mark Roberts, Monty Denton, Truman Dare, Hugh Forrest, Paul Wheeler, Iain Painting, Jenni Montgomery, Phil Mayall, Matthew Carpen and Angus Bruce.
Image credit: Adam Scott