Sustainable urban infrastructure is an evolving concept with multiple dimensions. Beyond engineering facilities and utilities, sustainable infrastructure includes local governance structures, intertwined economic growth issues such as climate change mitigation efforts and municipal waste.
Investment in urban green infrastructure (UGI), such as public parks, green roofs, green walls and street trees can bring multiple advantages for both people and the environment. This may include reduced greenhouse gas emissions as well as flood protection and biodiversity habitat benefits.
Water
Urban water infrastructure is vital to city residents. It ensures access to clean drinking water, reduces flooding and erosion risks, improves air quality, nourishes local biodiversity and lowers energy consumption by managing waste water efficiently, cutting pump power usage costs and mitigating pollution of local waterways.
Cities have relied on gray infrastructure – gutters, pipes and tunnels designed to funnel stormwater away from nearby bodies of water into treatment plants – for decades; however, such systems are becoming increasingly overwhelmed during extreme weather events.
Nature-Based Infrastructure (NBI) is a key feature of sustainable cities and refers to building in concert with nature rather than against it. NBI uses natural ecosystems and engineering solutions together to deliver cost-effective infrastructure services at climate resilience at cost. NBI includes natural areas like parks, greenways and trails, wetlands, forests, rain gardens and green roofs; as well as engineered features like bioswales, retention ponds and permeable pavements.
Energy
Urban infrastructure is an expansive concept, comprising engineered facilities, utilities and networks of intertwined issues that affect regulators, consumers, citizens, businesses and governments alike. Research into sustainable urban infrastructure seeks to address complex water, energy, environment, transport and construction issues by applying innovative technologies and incorporating social policies.
Increased urban temperatures and climate change are prompting cities to pursue sustainable practices, with natural solutions like green infrastructure being one of the primary strategies. Green infrastructure refers to infrastructure that incorporates nature as part of its design, such as parks, green roofs, street trees or urban wetlands that use nature as part of their structure; green infrastructure offers ecosystem services like reducing flooding, soil erosion, air pollutants removal and improving water quality among others.
Urban landscaping projects can also help alleviate heat build-up in cities by cooling and absorbing sunlight, as in North Dakota where one such initiative aims to prevent floods by turning cement and tarmac surfaces into green, absorbent areas.
Transportation
Georgia Tech researchers are leaders in studying large infrastructure systems such as energy production and distribution, water systems, transportation networks, structures and buildings. Our goal is to simultaneously increase quality growth while increasing energy equity by using sensing at scale computing techniques as well as data analytics tools.
Sustainable urban infrastructure development is vital in order to protect the environment, reduce environmental footprints, conserve resources and create healthier and more livable environments. This goal can be reached by prioritizing green building design, installing renewable energy production methods and developing efficient water management systems.
Cities can reduce their environmental footprint and promote sustainable commuting methods through alternative fuel use and rideshare systems, including ridesharing options. Sustainable urban infrastructure also consists of nature-based solutions like green pathways, parks and gardens as well as roof top gardens to improve air quality while reaping nature’s many advantages.
Waste
Waste resources can be utilized sustainably to build structures that enhance both cityscape and citizen lives. A key aspect of waste prevention involves encouraging innovative consumption patterns and business areas; creating reusability measures; and optimizing recovery chains.
Integrated urban greening also plays a crucial role in preventing waste by narrowing roads to reduce the “urban heat island” effect, encouraging tree planting that mitigates air pollution and absorbs rainwater, as well as by green infrastructure preventing runoff by reducing flooding, increasing groundwater recharge rates and ecosystem services provisioning, or returning it back into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration.
Sustainable urban infrastructure research is an ever-increasing area of focus as we enter the 21st century. Beyond engineered facilities and utilities, this topic now also encompasses governance, metabolic cities, e-city resilience concepts that are informed by social sciences as well as environmental sciences.