Sustainable urban infrastructure practices can enhance the environmental quality of cities, promoting environmental stewardship and creating communities that are resilient and adaptable to change.
Educating residents on the multiple functions of green infrastructure (like tree canopy cooling through evapotranspiration) builds community acceptance.
Showcasing attractive, well-maintained projects facilitates public buy-in. Regulatory complexities and the costs of green infrastructure can also raise concerns.
1. Energy efficiency
Energy efficiency is one of the key components of sustainable urban infrastructure. It is the most effective way to reduce building energy consumption, and thus, carbon emissions.
Natural and built infrastructures can play a crucial role in supporting energy efficiency through delivering ecosystem services (ES) and climate resilience measures. The ES concept, in particular, offers a planning tool for urban landscape/surface design, adapting UGI and green (blue) infrastructure to the specific needs of cities.
The Bullitt Center, for example, has a green roof and 26 geothermal wells that produce more energy than it uses — all while managing stormwater, filtering air pollutants, and moderating the city’s heat island effect. Other solutions include painting buildings white and installing “cool roofs” to reduce the sun’s influence on a building.
2. Water efficiency
Water efficiency is a critical component of sustainable urban infrastructure. It allows us to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.
Cities make up 3 percent of the world’s land, but are responsible for 60-80 percent of energy consumption and carbon emissions. They are also more vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters due to their high concentration of people, so building resilience is vital.
CDOT’s Sustainability Guidelines advance the integration of cutting-edge sustainable practices in our transportation right-of-way. These new standards establish citywide environmental performance goals for all CDOT projects and will help track future environmental outcomes over time. The goal is to allow Chicagoans to enjoy a high quality of life without depleting the city’s natural resources.
4. Materials
The sustainable urban infrastructure of the future needs to be made from materials that are durable and can last for a long time. This is crucial to reduce maintenance and repair costs, which in turn reduces life cycle energy consumption.
Urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS) have a multifunctional character, enabling them to serve flows of benefits at different spatial scales, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, water management, biodiversity enhancement, and active and passive recreation, for example through urban parks or green roofs (Pauleit et al., 2018).
While it may not be possible for every project to have a green roof like the Bullitt Center, any development can incorporate elements of sustainability into its design. For example, by installing a bin store that doubles as a green wall or cycle shelter, allowing everyday infrastructure to deliver environmental value.
5. Noise
While not a direct component of sustainable urban infrastructure, noise is an important issue that can impact quality of life. It’s important to consider noise as part of a holistic urban planning effort to ensure that the needs of current and future generations can be met.
In Europe, for example, cities contain large vestiges of nature including wetlands, forests, green parks and gardens and ‘vertical green’ (e.g. metroSTOR green roof structures). These natural spaces can help combat climate change and provide a range of ecosystem services.
In cities, it is especially important to build sustainability into city infrastructure. Otherwise, inequality can lead to unrest and violence, pollution will deteriorate everyone’s health and affect productivity, and natural disasters will disrupt people’s lives. Building sustainable infrastructure helps reduce these issues and make cities more resilient to global challenges that will affect everyone.