Green infrastructure can absorb or redirect stormwater runoff for multiple co-benefits. Streets, parking lots, and rooftops tend to repel it as it flows off naturally into gravity’s path – green infrastructure may provide solutions by absorbing or redirecting it and offering many co-benefits in return.
Sustainable urban infrastructure is vital to providing essential services like energy, water, transport and communication, but its design and management present unique challenges.
Greener Cities
Urban greening and sustainability initiatives offer the promise of addressing numerous environmental concerns, including biodiversity loss, pollution levels, climate change impacts, water management needs and public health considerations. Project proposals under this topic should consider innovative solutions that integrate green infrastructure seamlessly and form thematic links across policy areas.
Solutions could include greening streets, designing buildings with green facades and rooftop gardens, creating public transportation systems that prioritize bicycle routes and walking routes, investing in energy-efficient cars or investing in electric vehicles as part of an overall city sustainability strategy. Rainwater harvesting for non-potable use or urban irrigation schemes that promote soil health while mitigating flooding or drought risks may also form part of integrated city sustainability strategies.
Cities such as Stockholm, Portland and San Francisco are leading by example in developing greener urban infrastructure at both a neighborhood and city-wide level. By employing renewable energy sources like wind power or switching to renewables for electricity generation; recycling waste into new products or services through programs like “Zero Waste” or “Turning Trash to Resources; as well as encouraging green commute options like bicycles, transit systems or rideshare services they are cutting carbon emissions while encouraging healthier commute methods like bicycling or ridesharing services.
Resilient Cities
Resilient cities are capable of responding effectively to shocks and stresses that arise, as well as seizing opportunities for transformative development.
With urban infrastructures often costing high costs and lasting decades, it is crucial that sustainability be included as part of their planning. To do this, regular environmental impact assessments and resource monitoring must take place.
Integrating various perspectives and experiences is also critical in creating sustainable cities, since decisions made today by engineers and city planners will have lasting ramifications on future generations.
Ideal sustainable urban structures will be capable of mitigating both climatological and hydro-meteorological hazards, including droughts, extreme heat waves or flooding. Integration of green and blue infrastructure may help mitigate drought-inducing droughts while the preservation of natural ecosystems within cities will lower risks from environmental hazards – something achieved via green infrastructure development or biodiversity inclusion into urban design.
Smarter Cities
Smarter cities use technology to reduce energy and water use. It can also optimize traffic management, air pollution control and waste removal operations while increasing efficiency of urban services, which allows for higher quality of life and economic development without increasing resource consumption or its environmental impacts.
Residents are now empowered through digital platforms and apps to participate in city governance by reporting issues, accessing services and making sustainable choices. Cities also can utilize these technologies to collect real-time data for improved governance, infrastructure development and investment decisions.
Zurich embarked on its journey towards becoming a sustainable smart city in 2018, setting out with an aim of reducing 40% of CO2 emissions by 2025. Other cities like Pittsburgh and Amsterdam are using smart technology to ease traffic congestion, promote bike-friendly commuting options, optimize public transportation routes and monitor water consumption – which helps lower costs associated with water supply and treatment systems.
Healthy Cities
Imagine a world in which city centers were free from air pollution and full of green spaces with more pedestrians and cyclists than cars – an achievable dream in many cities around the world, yet making their urban environments sustainable requires hard work and collaboration from everyone involved.
An approach to healthy cities takes housing and sanitation as paramount health priorities; unsanitary conditions can contribute to tuberculosis (TB), malaria (malaria), yellow fever and other infectious diseases. Furthermore, urban planning that ensures access to affordable yet nutritious foods as well as creating environments conducive to physical activity and mental wellbeing should also be prioritized.
Rehumanizing urban centers through investments in cultural amenities that allow citizens to form bonds among themselves and redefine their sense of community identity is an integral component of healthy cities. Such investments also support characteristics 5 (resourceful urban water management) and 6 (access to wide variety of experiences). Effective intersectoral coordination must be implemented for this approach to be realized successfully.