Sustainable urban infrastructure encompasses systems that provide essential services to city residents such as transportation, water management, energy generation and communication networks. These infrastructure systems may be natural or built according to conventional protocols.
Building a green city requires significant investments in sustainable and resilient infrastructure that will reduce emissions along the 1.5 degree trajectory, create quality jobs, ensure local prosperity and long-term growth, as well as ensure long-term prosperity and economic resilience.
Integrating Green Infrastructure
Integration of green infrastructure into urban infrastructure plans offers many environmental and social advantages, including:
Green Infrastructure Enhances Water Quality
Green infrastructure practices reduce pollution reaching waterways through processes like adsorption (when contaminants attach themselves to soil or plant surfaces), filtration and uptake by vegetation (where plants absorb nutrients from the ground). Furthermore, these processes also decrease stormwater runoff into sewer systems which strains treatment plants and threatens local ecosystems.
Reduce Urban Heat Island Effect
Trees help mitigate urban heat island effect by providing shade and evaporative cooling, thereby decreasing demand for air conditioning units and energy costs while simultaneously slowing temperature-dependent reactions that contribute to air pollution. This also slows temperature-related reactions which contribute to smog pollution.
Cities Should Promote Sustainable Transportation
Cities should create cost-efficient and eco-friendly public transportation systems to allow commuters to travel more sustainably while decreasing carbon emissions. This can be accomplished through providing pathways for pedestrians and cyclists as well as lanes reserved for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Climate-Resilient Infrastructure
Climate-resilient infrastructure can withstand both expected and unexpected climate events without suffering significant damage or failure, over its lifetime. Additionally, climate resilience infrastructure embraces sustainability principles such as resourcefulness, robustness, redundancy and flexibility while simultaneously striving to achieve positive environmental co-benefits like supporting nature-based solutions and improving urban ecosystem health.
Resilient infrastructure must be designed from the outset of project planning and design, meaning incorporating climate change risk assessment and adaptation measures into design standards, building codes and construction processes as early as possible. Rethinking inspections, maintenance and day-to-day operations to take account of future risks is also key for creating resilient infrastructure.
Municipalities can evaluate the long-term costs associated with maintaining status quo infrastructure and compare them with investing in climate-resilient alternatives, enabling them to prioritize projects based on priority, assess tradeoffs between options and determine how much to invest in each. Once this decision has been made, municipalities can then create investment scenarios based on available funds in order to assess benefits and costs from different funding sources.
Public Awareness and Engagement
Natural vegetation, green roofs, bioswales and permeable pavements all help manage stormwater runoff, reduce urban heat island effect, improve air quality and create habitats for biodiversity – essential aspects of sustainable infrastructure that support global climate and biodiversity targets as well as making cities more resilient against climate change.
Integrating community involvement into the design and development process increases residents’ sense of ownership over infrastructure projects, promotes transparency, reduces opposition, and ensures projects meet residents’ needs and aspirations (Carayannis & Campbell 2022).
Energy efficiency in infrastructure is key to mitigating environmental impacts, from ensuring a lower carbon footprint by encouraging alternative energy sources and recycling materials to responsible use of finite resources like finite water supplies and protecting sensitive ecosystems. Cultural amenities, like museums and recreational facilities can rehumanize urban centers while helping communities shape their identity.
Developing Knowledge
Research in sustainable urban infrastructure involves engineering systems designed, built and operated so as to maximize economic, environmental and social sustainability throughout their life cycle. Essentially, research in this area seeks to find greener alternatives than traditional infrastructure systems like roads or water networks.
Sustainable urban infrastructure development can increase quality of life for residents by improving environmental health, decreasing traffic congestion and offering affordable mobility options. Furthermore, sustainable practices make cities more appealing to business, lowering operating costs while simultaneously freeing up funds for community development projects.
Nature-based infrastructure (NBI) is the best approach to creating environmentally-friendly urban infrastructure, as it integrates natural ecosystems with engineered structures to deliver essential infrastructure services such as flood protection, water filtration and temperature regulation. NBI also provides numerous co-benefits that benefit people as well as wildlife alike, such as habitat for endangered species or recreational opportunities.