Sustainable urban infrastructure refers to equipment and systems that meet essential service needs of populations while remaining environmentally-friendly, such as roads, buildings and utilities like hydroelectric power plants.
Building in harmony with nature requires working to reduce strain on gray infrastructure – for instance, using green stormwater management strategies and designing energy-efficient buildings to mitigate stormwater runoff issues.
Investing in the Future
Infrastructure investments are critical to reducing energy use, waste, pollution and climate resilience while increasing economic competitiveness and creating climate resilient cities. Unfortunately, governments face limited borrowing capacity, debt ceilings and credit ratings issues which prevent them from making the necessary infrastructure investments for sustainability and resilience goals. This has resulted in a multi-trillion dollar gap requiring investment for attaining their sustainability and resilience goals.
Private financing through P3s can provide one solution. This approach allows for more sustainable, innovative, and integrated infrastructure design; local communities also stand to gain from infrastructure solutions they helped shape (such as regional compost processing facilities).
Another eco-friendly infrastructure solution is creating infrastructure systems based on nature-based infrastructure (NBI). This offers cost-effective climate-resilient infrastructure services while also offering additional advantages for citizens, such as reduced reliance on grey infrastructure for services like water supply and flood control while protecting urban biodiversity – not to mention new job creation in the green economy!
Munich’s Success Story
Munich can serve as an invaluable example of sustainable urban infrastructure. The city has a long and distinguished history of rebuilding itself to maintain a beautiful historic centre, vibrant cultural life and low crime rates despite climate change impacts, water scarcity issues, and need for affordable housing solutions.
Sustainable urban infrastructure is a complex area of governance which seeks to co-ordinate the creation, deployment and management of infrastructural systems within and beyond municipal borders in such a way as to promote ecological integrity, social equity and economic viability in a way that benefits ecological integrity, equity and viability simultaneously. To do this successfully requires proactive planning, strategic interventions and mediating between competing stakeholder interests.
Integral planning and coordination bridge the divides between government agencies. It involves incorporating sustainability goals into long-term visions and strategic plans for infrastructure development as well as devising metrics and indicators aligned with sustainability targets, as well as setting regulatory frameworks and incentives that foster green infrastructure practices.
Reducing Carbon Emissions
Cities contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions, yet are home to most people worldwide and present unique opportunities to combat climate change. They must switch away from fossil fuels and cars towards electric mobility; adopt energy efficiency strategies; and integrate nature-based solutions.
Changes can include changing how buildings are constructed to reduce carbon dioxide output, such as using wood instead of concrete and steel for construction purposes. City planners could plant trees to absorb any CO2 that would otherwise be released into the air; also, more cycling lanes and car-free zones should be created for better transportation options.
Academic research into sustainable urban infrastructure policy goes beyond technical optimization to consider its deeper social, environmental and economic dimensions. It addresses such questions as who benefits from existing infrastructure systems and whether they can be modified to address new challenges; for this to work successfully it requires multidisciplinary insights from engineering, economics, political science sociology ecology to come together into one framework.
Social Impact Bonds
Building sustainable urban infrastructure can be an arduous, complicated, and politically charged project. Decisions about its design have lasting social, environmental, and economic ramifications; for example a highway system designed for suburban car commuters only may contribute to climate change while failing to connect urban residents leads to segregation.
Many of the challenges of financing sustainable urban infrastructure can be mitigated through private funding sources. Public-private partnership (P3) approaches that tie investor returns directly to social outcomes are one way of doing this.
Other strategies involve adopting natural bio-infrastructure (NBI), which provides an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative to traditional infrastructure. NBI includes parks, green roofs, urban forests and permeable pavements – providing wildlife shelter while mitigating climate change impacts as well as mitigating energy efficiency losses from energy efficiency loss reduction and climate change mitigation measures. NBI can improve local biodiversity while decreasing city ecological footprint. Furthermore, natural systems help build community resilience and boost economies.