Sustainable urban infrastructure refers to infrastructure that is planned, designed, built and operated in such a way as to promote economic, social and environmental wellbeing. Examples of sustainable infrastructure are car parking reduction by increasing walking and biking opportunities; treating stormwater near its source to avoid chemical pollution; and re-establishing green spaces to create recreation while decreasing noise pollution.
Green Infrastructure
As cities grow, we must create green infrastructure (also referred to as blue-green infrastructure), which replaces paved surfaces with systems that mimic the permeability of forests, fields and undisturbed soils. These systems capture stormwater runoff before discharging it into the environment through infiltration or evapotranspiration–transforming stormwater from an irritating nuisance into something with potential value creation.
New systems often provide less costly and more resilient engineering-based solutions – what we refer to as grey infrastructure – while providing environmental, social and economic advantages.
Staten Island Bluebelt in New York City captured and stored stormwater runoff, which helped reduce flooding and pollution in its borough. This project highlights how green infrastructure can make our communities more sustainable and equitable in the future, which will be necessary to meet Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree pathway and support resilient economies that have climate resilience.
Resilience
Resilience is a central element of sustainable urban infrastructure strategies. Resilience refers to our ability to overcome and adapt quickly after difficult challenges such as stressors, traumas, setbacks or disruptions; additionally it refers to our capacity to cope with adversity with optimism while nurturing community resiliency.
Resilience development can be thought of as a seesaw with protective experiences and coping resources on one side, and significant adversities on the other. Resilience may be affected by several factors including environment context, specific challenges faced, available resources as well as individual, family, organization community or culture characteristics.
Panelists highlighted that an empirical investigation of resilience should include multiple disciplines as its determinants may differ among individuals, communities, organizations and cultures. Furthermore, operational definitions must include engineering aspects as well as ecological, biological, individual family lifecycle stages, organizational culture issues as well as cultural differences when considering resilience as a universal concept.
Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is a cornerstone of sustainable urban infrastructure strategies, helping cities reduce their ecological footprint, dependence on non-renewable natural resources and costs, as well as reduce emissions and harmful emissions.
Cities looking to achieve energy efficiency must prioritize efficient heating, cooling, lighting systems as well as sustainable transportation systems and promote eco-friendly building materials and practices in order to achieve energy efficiency.
To assess the sustainability of an urban infrastructure project, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) can be an effective means of evaluation. COST C8 project developed an assessment matrix which included environmental, economic and social criteria. With this approach in place, cities can select the most sustainable project for any particular situation and reduce unnecessary resource consumption, harmful emissions reduction and improve livability for residents – this type of assessment can be implemented anywhere that seeks a green and sustainable future.
Transportation
As cities become more densely populated, their infrastructure must evolve in tandem. This means transforming technical infrastructure such as transportation systems and energy networks into sustainable urban infrastructure.
Sustainable infrastructure systems are planned, designed, built, operated and decommissioned in such a way as to guarantee economic, financial, social and environmental (including climate resilience) sustainability over the lifetime of their life cycle. In addition to engineered facilities and utilities, this includes natural ecosystems – this latter form is known as nature-based infrastructure (NBI).
Sustainability studies is an interdisciplinary field encompassing transport studies, architecture, landscape design, sociology, geography, ecology, water management engineering and economics. To effectively evaluate sustainability projects at local levels it is particularly crucial to develop methods and tools for evaluating sustainability of projects at this scale; cities need to shift away from building roads towards supporting public transport systems as this promotes compact cities while simultaneously cutting emissions from freight transportation and aviation emissions.