Alan Penn, Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. Photo: Elaine Perks

As an architect and an optimist, I am hopeful that the chaos in Britain triggered by the Brexit referendum may be accompanied by yet another great age of creative invention.

Radical moves in art are often born of divisions in society: the great age of Elizabethan drama following the English Reformation was born of a society divided along religious lines. Shakespeare rewrote and interpreted history in response to the radical constitutional shifts of his age. The economic collapse of Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s oversaw the birth of modernism. The German crisis was an outcome of industrial war between European nation states over the rights of empire to colonial resources and markets. During The creative innovation we are about to see will be at an urban and regional scale.this period the Bauhaus worked to invent a popular aesthetic for the products of industrial mass manufacture and the new consumers of its labour force; an international style for an industrial age.

I will go out on a limb and make a prediction. The creative innovation we are about to see will be at an urban and regional scale. It will involve forms of government and economy, as well as technology, creating a new relationship between civil society and the environment. Architecture and urbanism will be centrally involved, as will science and education.

My logic is as follows. The UK vote to leave the EU is symptomatic of a shift in the global economy, society and culture. To take a long view, the industrial revolution and industrial period of our recent history should be seen as a moment of transition from an agricultural to a post-industrial society. We are now in the last, perhaps painful, stage of that transition. As Britain was the first to enter the industrial revolution, so too are we amongst the first to move beyond it.

It has been argued that it was the invention of urban living around 10,000 BC that triggered the agricultural revolution and made possible the transition from a hunter-gatherer society. The domestication of staple crops and livestock was accompanied by the invention of writing and money, as well as the social, political and legal organisation required to manage water resources and to store surpluses against times of famine. During the agricultural age human labour was used for its muscle power. It was an age of backbreaking work and immense poverty for the mass of humanity.The mapping between community identity and economy is deep seated.

The industrial revolution was built on burning carbon to provide power, and the invention of machines to use that power for production. Human labour was not now required for its brute force, but was divided between repetitive dexterity and creative invention. The textile looms of the mill towns invented by the creative engineers of the day had to be serviced and kept running by a mass of nimble fingers. This form of skill-based labour gave rise to communities based on tradition and a contribution to society specific to their industry. Miners, ship builders, fisherman and manufacturing industry created community and identity. These were the great trades of 19th century Britain and they defined the social contribution by which communities valued themselves. Their geography was place-based. Textiles in Manchester, steel in Sheffield, shipbuilding in Belfast, the Clyde and the Tyne, mining in the coal fields, and so forth. The mapping between community identity and economy is deep seated.

Two factors were central to the evolution of these industries: science and the invention of credit. Creative innovation perpetuates science: the steam engine gave rise to the laws of thermodynamics, and so to better steam engines. Steadily, repetitive tasks have been replaced by machinery, just as muscle power was replaced by steam, and labour has turned from dexterity towards creative innovation. Credit made possible the investment required for exploration and innovation. British success during the industrial revolution came from the coupling of science and credit with industry and labour, ably assisted by a colonial empire that supplied raw materials and markets.This is the challenge: to rebuild a meaningful contribution to society for those whom globalisation and automation have deprived of their traditional role and identity.

The geography of the UK was defined and created by this history, as were its legal and political structures. London brought together all the components required by a modern nation state—good government, rule of law, science, education and credit—all densely networked and interactive. The capital was closely connected by its transport infrastructure to the specialised industrial geography of the UK, and by sea to Europe and the rest of the world.

With the end of empire came industrial restructuring. Jobs were automated or exported. The role of innovation, science and credit expanded to fill the economic gap. London flourished, but this did not directly replace the traditional industries outside the capital. As shipyards, textile mills and coal mines closed, young people with an education moved into the cities to find work. Benefits and EU structural funds allowed survival, but did nothing to replace the loss of identity in these areas. Residential rents in the overheated southeast exacerbated the divide.

It is a loss of identity more than anything else that led to the vote to leave the EU. Deprived of identity based in a traditional economic community, the so-called ‘dispossessed’ fall back to an identity based on nostalgia, race and notions of ‘Britishness’. They argue that this is threatened by migration and loss of sovereignty, and have been told by the Eurosceptic media and politicians that the EU is to blame.

We can now see that the vote to leave the EU has several components. Let me be clear. A referendum is a good way of determining a course of action that will deliver the greatest The internet embeds us in a global network, but this is prone to segregate us into communities of interest.good for the greatest number only if the voters vote in their self-interest. If instead they vote on matters of principle or ideology rather than self-interest there is a risk that direct democracy will deliver a result in which nobody benefits and in fact the poorest fare worst.

This is the challenge: to rebuild a meaningful contribution to society for those whom globalisation and automation have deprived of their traditional role and identity. Here is the challenge for architecture and planning: to help create the conditions in which communities can build a sense of contribution to society other than through the traditional industries. John Maynard Keynes foresaw this possibility in his essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ written during the Great Depression. He also predicted the difficulty that we would face in shifting our mindset away from productive labour and towards prosperity.

It is not just a challenge for the UK, but is global in its extent. The whole world is passing through this transition and in one way or another is facing the same set of issues. Donald Trump in the USA, ISIS in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Africa, Erdogan in Turkey; populism, fundamentalism and nationalism feed on identity and difference. The internet embeds us in a global network, but this is prone to segregate us into communities of interest. It is still the role of built space to integrate and act as a mixing mechanism. The reason that London is so wonderfully cosmopolitan is that it mixes communities. This is also the reason that it is so economically successful. This is a product of urbanism, something to be understood and used to create the post-industrial landscape of community and global prosperity.

Alan Penn is Dean of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London.