Sustainable urban infrastructure is essential for creating a low-carbon economy and resilient communities. It involves designing self-sufficient communities with green spaces integrated into them as well as integrating sustainable infrastructure into daily life.
Cities cover only 3 per cent of Earth’s landmass, yet they consume 60-80 per cent of energy and account for 75 per cent of carbon emissions. But new kinds of cities may offer hope.
Green infrastructure
Green infrastructure (or nature-based infrastructure, or NBI) has become increasingly popular as a solution to urban issues like flooding and air pollution. By incorporating natural elements into city spaces, these eco-solutions can increase biodiversity while supporting sustainable growth in communities.
Green infrastructure utilizes permeable pavements, rain gardens, wetlands, green roofs, parks and urban forests as part of its solution for flooding and runoff reduction. Furthermore, this approach can also mitigate urban heat islands’ effects, improve air quality and add biophilia into cities.
However, it’s essential to consider how greening impacts communities that have experienced environmental injustice. Advocacy and local resident engagement in project implementation can be invaluable here; by including this community-led approach to green infrastructure projects implementation can benefit not only all residents in a city but also provide job creation in areas like landscaping, engineering and design while simultaneously decreasing costs and increasing sustainability of urban infrastructure projects.
Nature-based infrastructure (NBI)
Nature-based infrastructure (NBI) is an approach that uses natural processes to deliver essential infrastructure services, such as the creation or restoration of forests, wetlands and grasslands. NBI strategies often result in improved water quality and flood resilience as well as supporting biodiversity conservation goals.
NBIs can be cost-effective solutions with multiple advantages for cities. NBIs may help mitigate climate impacts while improving community wellbeing and stimulating local economies – creating more sustainable, resilient, equitable futures in urban environments.
Implementing National Biosaline Sinks in urban green infrastructure presents multiple obstacles that must be surmounted, ranging from financial, technical, social and political barriers. Furthermore, policy shifts, instability in governance structures, misalignments between local programs and city-scale strategies and misalignment between them all may compound these difficulties further. This study seeks to identify key barriers through an in-depth bibliometric analysis of 90 peer-reviewed articles about NBSs implemented into urban green infrastructure; with its themes categorizes according to system and featuring repeating codes so as to inform future research efforts and implementation efforts.
Resilient infrastructure
Urban resilience refers to a city’s capacity to absorb, adapt, and transform in response to shocks and stresses while supporting residents and maintaining essential functions. This encompasses anticipated and unanticipated events alike – such as natural disasters or economic downturns – while maintaining essential functions and supporting residents. Resilient infrastructure must be designed, constructed, and managed so it can face these challenges head on so cities can stay alive and thrive.
Resilient infrastructure strategies encompass an array of approaches for creating sustainable and livable cities, such as integrated planning, community engagement and strategic investments. These strategies offer a holistic view of sustainability which considers all aspects of city life–from infrastructure to social services.
Resilient infrastructure is integral to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Reliable food supply systems can contribute toward meeting SDG 2’s target of ending hunger while resilient water systems help fulfill SDG 6’s goal of providing safe drinking water to all. Furthermore, resilient design fosters nature-based solutions and smart technologies into city infrastructure.
Energy efficiency
Energy efficiency is one of the key tenets of sustainable urban infrastructure. Cities require large amounts of energy to power economic activity, expand infrastructure and deliver municipal services; yet their current dependence on fossil fuels makes them vulnerable to price spikes or supply interruptions and contributes to environmental degradation.
To address this, cities must implement greener technologies on both ends – supply side and demand – while simultaneously encouraging low carbon lifestyles on demand side. This means switching over to renewable sources of energy such as solar or wind and adopting efficient distribution infrastructure that decreases usage of electricity.
Cities need to invest in cutting-edge environmental practices and create conditions for private sector partners to deploy innovative solutions. Chicago has established guidelines for integrating sustainability into transportation right-of-way projects and provide a framework for tracking environmental performance of CDOT projects. This Research Topic encourages submissions from urban planners, geographers, climate scientists and engineers exploring how advanced technology and strategic planning can enhance environmental performance of urban infrastructure.