Abstract
The scope of the paper is to overview the different approaches for evaluation of urban infrastructure sustainability. In this context, urban infrastructure covers transportation, energy, water, sewage and information networks as well as waste management and blue-green infrastructure, in terms of both the supply and demand side. A common effort of partners in the European project “C8—Best Practice in Sustainable Urban Infrastructure”, developed under the Cooperation in Science and Technology program (COST), in brief COST C8, was focused on defining the methods, indicators and criteria for evaluation of sustainability, and resulted in a guidebook for decision-makers in local authorities. Here, the COST C8 matrix for simple sustainability assessment of urban infrastructure is applied to The Path (POT) case—a circular memorial and recreational park around the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The applicability and acceptance of the matrix in 43 other cases of sustainable urban infrastructure, collected in the COST C8 project, is presented and discussed.
Highlights
Various urban projects contribute to the development of urban infrastructure
Apart from the well known Brundtland definition of sustainable development, where sustainable development is seen as ―development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs‖ [2], it has been commonly accepted that sustainable urban infrastructure focuses on prevention of unnecessary consumption of natural resources and mitigation of harmful emissions
A number of studies focus on the comparison of methods and tools for sustainability assessment of buildings and neighborhoods, some methods cover all three sustainability dimensions [5,6,7,8], while the others remain in environmental scope, like preferentially Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) based tools [9,10]
Summary
Various urban projects contribute to the development of urban infrastructure. The municipalities need methods and tools for evaluating project sustainability. It is important for decision-makers at a local level to achieve a common understanding on sustainability and related criteria for decision-making in urban planning and design dealing with infrastructure. Like transportation, energy, water supply, sewage and information networks, represents the skeleton of a city. It provides the end-users with materials, energy and information. Apart from the well known Brundtland definition of sustainable development, where sustainable development is seen as ―development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs‖ [2], it has been commonly accepted that sustainable urban infrastructure focuses on prevention of unnecessary consumption of natural resources (especially non-renewable ones) and mitigation of harmful emissions
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