Visions for Sustainable Infrastructure

Unprecedented populations in cities have forced some infrastructure systems to become larger, more complex and more interdependent. The decisions that are made today on delivering services to cities can have long term consequences, affecting the resilience, economics and resources of the city in the future as well as the health and wellbeing of city inhabitants. New technologies are also changing the way we can deliver infrastructure services, thus redefining some of our basic premises about infrastructure needs and creating clashes between old, now inefficient but built in technologies and new, completely different and much more efficient technologies. In addition, infrastructure, including the built environment, is a major consumer of funding, energy and material resources, during both construction and maintenance. Yet healthy and functioning infrastructures are the key to a sustainable city as they deliver the essential services to fulfil the needs of both current and future generations. A new vision for sustainable infrastructure is needed, which will recognise the long term future of our cities, the need to deliver basic services to all inhabitants and the implications for businesses and manufacturers. This paper presents some of the elements which will have to be taken into consideration in that new vision.