Sustainable urban infrastructure policies seek to design, deploy and manage urban infrastructure systems in such a way as to promote ecological integrity, social equity and economic viability. This policy area is constantly adapting and changing as factors such as technological innovations and shifting societal priorities alter its scope.
Decentralized infrastructure gives communities greater control of managing local resources and services, leading to reduced energy and water consumption as well as lower environmental impacts associated with transport.
Green Infrastructure
Green infrastructure offers nature-based solutions to problems like urban stormwater runoff and climate change, combining economic sustainability with adaptability, resiliency and social equity. Green infrastructure often costs less than its “gray” equivalent and delivers far greater advantages.
Improves water quality by limiting pollutant runoff into waterways and by filtering and treating any polluted stormwater that reaches them, using methods like adsorption, filtration, plant uptake and decomposition to remove contaminants from this runoff. Furthermore, green roofs help cool the environment through both active evapotranspiration and passive surface shading techniques.
Water recycling also provides a cost-effective source of non-potable uses such as irrigation and car washing, saving costs associated with treating and transporting it directly to homes (which account for as much as 40 percent of municipal drinking water costs).
Water Management
Sustainable urban infrastructure seeks to coordinate the creation and deployment of urban infrastructural systems in such a manner that proactively advances ecological integrity, social equity (underpinning sustainability by allocating resources evenly among generations), economic viability and other sustainability criteria. In other words, sustainable urban infrastructure involves overseeing its creation and deployment through processes of learning, experimentation and adaptation over time.
Environmental sustainability involves addressing resource extraction and global supply chains that have negative environmental impacts, building resilience to long-term environmental and societal shifts such as climate change, resource depletion and socioeconomic shifts, equitable participation in infrastructure planning and decision-making processes and providing underserved communities with equal access to infrastructure benefits as well as encouraging community driven innovation, public-private partnerships that support sustainability goals and sustainable financing approaches such as social impact bonds.
Energy Efficiency
As cities become increasingly energy intensive and carbon intensive, addressing their energy footprint is integral to creating sustainable cities. To do so successfully requires taking a comprehensive approach that involves technological innovations, policy interventions, behavioral change interventions and behavior modification to build city systems which are both environmentally responsible and economically feasible in the long term.
Environmentally sustainable infrastructure must be designed and constructed in such a way as to minimize its effect on disadvantaged communities, while increasing benefits for all residents. This involves taking steps such as prioritizing infrastructure investments in historically underserved neighborhoods.
Challenge of Entrenched Power Structures
Infrastructure development patterns that are unsustainable tend to be embedded within existing power structures and vested interests, thus necessitating academic analysis of sustainability policies with a critical lens that questions assumptions and power dynamics that shape infrastructure development trajectories, while remaining open-minded towards new knowledge and learning as we recognize that understanding sustainability issues and solutions is ever evolving.
Transportation
Opting for non-motorized transport modes like buses, trains, subways, bike lanes and sidewalks as a method to move people and goods reduces energy use and carbon emissions while improving air quality while increasing physical activity levels – bringing health benefits through physical activity increases.
Sustainable urban infrastructure strives for harmonious solutions that integrate ecological, social, and economic goals in an effort to meet sustainable development. In practice this means considering how different infrastructure systems interact with one another as well as city ecosystems; challenging entrenched power structures with vested interests for more equitable decision-making processes; as well as challenging entrenched power structures within societies to promote more democratic decision making processes.
Sustainable urban infrastructure seeks to minimize environmental impacts associated with resource extraction and supply chains, while academic work in this field examines urban consumers’ ecological footprint and dominant development paradigms. Achieve social equity may require prioritizing infrastructure investments for underserved communities while guaranteeing equitable access to sustainable practices and resources – this may help mitigate pollution in overburdened communities while improving quality of life overall, in addition to mitigating climate change impacts by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging sustainable land management practices.