Broadening the Definition of Infrastructure
I’m reading a new book from John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. It brings to mind the current discussions on infrastructure, particularly the Obama’s administration plan to create 2.5 to 3 million new jobs by rebuilding our decaying infrastructure.
There’s also talk among architects as well as AIA chapters about broadening the definition of infrastructure; they say it’s more than just road widenings and bridge rebuilding. It needs to include our schools, public buildings, parks facilities, and fixing suburban sprawl. They have a point.
Retrofitting aging suburbs to be more urban will, of course, create jobs and reduce our dependence on cars and, incidentally, this will also help reduce global warming. Creating greater proximity between home, workplace, and shopping will give lower-income Americans more spending power, and this will also help revive the country.
It’s encouraging to see that there are enough suburban retrofits to fill a whole book. Retrofitting Suburbia helps provide evidence the new administration needs to put together a broad spectrum program that will create jobs, improve quality of life for all, and energy independence.
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It would be great if the design community would look at infrastructure needs to include not only physical buildings but how the built environment relates to other forms of infrastructure—from wireless, energy management and financial networks to critical infrastructures. This country is great at supporting innovation, but less so at adaptation, especially at establishing national standards, whether it’s the metric system, universal healthcare, or bandwiths. In 2007, the AIA California Council issued an interesting report on integrated project delivery as a way to get all parties involved in a project from architects, engineers, subcontractors, owners and attorneys together to create an integrated process. It’s a good start.
Comment by Paul — January 6, 2009, @ 12:03 am
Hi Horace,
Couldn’t agree more. I have a proposal that I have been working on for the past five years of developing a new program that would prototype the whole city as infrastructure. I call this idea Sustainable Cities on Planet Earth (S.C.O.P.E). It proposes a public/private partnership to develop 50 prototype sustainable cities (one in each state) which would become the test beds for new ideas in urbanism. Research and monitoring would bring a vast amount of information in terms of sustainability, both human and environmental. Given the new administration’s forward thinking approach, I believe this might be a much better way of spending infrastructure monies. I do have a paper with more detail if you are interested in seeing it.
Take care,
Tony
Comment by Anony Brown — January 6, 2009, @ 11:00 am
The notion of investing in our aging suburbs is becoming a growing topic for discussion in the UK too (see http://uclsstc.wordpress.com/). I also agree with the broader definition of infrastructure, to include all of the non-residential activity necessary to create local centres that serve the need of suburbs so that journeys are shorter.
Comment by Laura — January 19, 2009, @ 3:30 pm