Urban Infrastructure Networks Research Articles

Urban experiments and climate change: securing zero carbon development in Bangalore

Climate change is an increasingly important issue on urban policy and research agendas. As this agenda gathers pace, this paper argues for an approach that recognises the critical role of climate change experiments in meditating the response to climate change in the city. Drawing on a case study of a green housing development in the outskirts of Bangalore in India—Towards Zero Carbon Development (T-Zed)—the paper follows the emergence of an experiment in the simultaneous processes of making, maintaining and living low carbon alongside and in between existing infrastructure regimes. It is argued that this experiment has created space for social and technical innovation, reworking notions of urban development in Bangalore. At the same time, it has reconfigured existing urban infrastructure networks through new discourses and practices of urban ecological security, enabling the emergence of a new rhetoric of low carbon living within the city that effectively marries green forms of consumption with urban development. While the experiment serves as a means for modifying urbanism in Bangalore, its results are ambivalent in the context of ongoing inequalities within the city and beyond.

The Infrastructural Limits to Growth: Rethinking the Urban Growth Machine in Times of Fiscal Crisis

Abstract Since the 1970s, centralized interventions into the infrastructural affairs of US cities have been in decline. As a result, local entities have been compelled to shoulder a greater share of the burden for developing the urban infrastructure networks and public works needed to support growth. Under conditions of neoliberalism, local officials and growth-machine participants have pursued this local infrastructural imperative by means of increasingly speculative and risky financing strategies deployed through the ‘back door’ of traditional democratic channels. The following analysis is empirically focused on three Californian cities — Emeryville, Oxnard and Vallejo — which achieved impressive levels of growth around the turn of the twenty-first century. However, these cities subsequently suffered precipitous economic contraction. As such, they demonstrate the unprecedented challenges now facing the urban growth machine in the wake of the current global economic crisis. Two emergent challenges, in particular, appear poised to challenge the historical resiliency of the growth machine: the ‘reverse infrastructural trap’ and nascent conflicts between municipal bondholders and municipal employees. The cases presented here thus raise important questions about the continued viability of the pro-growth agenda in the context of structural fiscal deficits, chronic infrastructural decline and extreme capital-market volatility. Résumé Depuis les années 1970, les interventions centralisées dans les projets d'infrastructure des grandes villes américaines ont nettement diminué. Les organes locaux ont donc dû assumer une proportion plus grande de l'aménagement des réseaux d'infrastructure urbaine et des travaux publics nécessaires à la croissance. En vertu du néolibéralisme, les responsables locaux et les parties prenantes dans la ‘machine à croissance’ ont cherchéà répondre à cet ‘impératif infrastructurel’ local au moyen de stratégies de financement spéculatives et risquées contournant les canaux démocratiques traditionnels. L'analyse s'intéresse ici, sur une base empirique, à trois villes californiennes, Emeryville, Oxnard et Vallejo, qui ont atteint des niveaux de croissance impressionnants vers le début du XXIe siècle. Or, elles ont ensuite souffert du ralentissement brutal de l'économie. De ce fait, elles présentent les défis sans précédents qui se posent désormais à la machine à croissance urbaine, compte tenu de la crise économique mondiale actuelle. Deux nouveaux problèmes, notamment, semblent menacer la résilience traditionnelle de la machine à croissance: le ‘piège infrastructurel inversé’ et les conflits d'intérêt naissants entre détenteurs d'obligations-recettes et employés municipaux. Les cas exposés soulèvent d'importantes questions sur la pérennité d'un programme axé sur la croissance, dans un contexte de déficits budgétaires structurels, de réduction chronique des infrastructures et de volatilité extrême des marchés financiers.

Tenencia segura, servicios y hábitat. Experiencias asiáticas

Este artículo hace una breve presentación de tres proyectos en Asia, que se constituyen como alternativas capaces de suministrar un desarrollo equitativo para gente que habitaba en asentamientos precarios; representan innovaciones sociales, institucionales y urbanísticas. El valor de las propuestas radica en su modestia, pues tratan de responder a situaciones difíciles con realismo. Se identificaron algunos denominadores comunes para que estos proyectos resultaran exitosos: la tenencia y seguridad de la tierra, los esfuerzos que se han hecho para incorporar a los inquilinos informales en las redes de la infraestructura urbana y la vivienda que en muchas soluciones se presta para un mejoramiento continuo e incremental. Los ejemplos aportan lecciones que pueden contribuir a solucionar problemas de escasez, calidad de vivienda y hábitat para familias de estratos bajos y marginados. Pueden servir como referencia y modelo para los gobiernos, el sector privado y la sociedad civil interesada en la construcción de una ciudad sostenible. Soluciones y conceptos aplicados en otras partes del mundo pueden llegar a ser relevantes para América Latina y Colombia.

Formulation of Resilience Index of Urban Infrastructure Using Belief Functions

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Most urban infrastructure are interdependent in various ways. A variety of qualitative explanations are presented in the literature to analyze and address resiliency and vulnerability. Unfortunately, most of the explanation do not provide an objective resilience index computation. This paper attempts to develop a resilience index for urban infrastructure using a belief function framework. The belief function framework can handle subjective, independent information and hierarchical data, all of which are characteristics of the inputs required for proper resilience index analyses. The steps of the analyses are presented using a prototype urban highway infrastructure network. </para>

Reconceptualizing urban governance through a new paradigm for urban infrastructure networks

This article focuses on the rapidly changing ownership and governance of urban infrastructure networks. While institutional investors are expending capital and time purchasing infrastructure assets in cities around the world, the changes in the management of urban infrastructure networks are under researched. Both the reasons for the transformations of and the impacts on urban infrastructure assets, such as roads, airports and water utilities around the world, are discussed and reconceptualized through emerging supranational glocal governance and financialization frameworks.

Fund Allocation for Transportation Network Recovery Following Natural Disasters

Urban transportation infrastructure networks are highly sensitive to natural disasters yet critical for the success of rescue, recovery and renovation operations; as such, prompt restoration of such networks becomes of critical importance for disaster relief services. Interestingly, while fund allocation in infrastructure management has been extensively studied in the literature, most studies have focused on regular (scheduled) repair, maintenance and rehabilitation actions, largely ignoring fund allocation in emergency situations, a topic of considerable interest in practice. The present paper proposes a methodology for optimally allocating funds for repairing an urban infrastructure network following natural disasters using a three-stage genetic algorithm based approach. The methodology is tested with data from Athens, Greece, a densely populated urban area highly prone to earthquakes and with an extensive bridge network. Results indicate that the methodology proposed provides fast and reliable results ...

REURBANISATION AND TRANSPORT PLANNING: A CASE STUDY

The reurbanisation trends emerging in a number of developed and post-industrial cities are possibly related (also) to the key role played by transportation system in determining urban size and its shape, as well as urban location patterns. Because of the dynamic interaction between urban transport and land use, of relevant scale- and time-indivisibilities, and of long-lasting effects of urban infrastructure network, accuracy in demand forecasts is more and more crucial for planning transport infrastructure networks in this phase of urban life-cycle. The paper includes results of a case study concerning the city of Genoa, where re-urbanisation is apparently emerging in recent years, with relevant consequences on transport demand and infrastructural system. The case study includes the analysis and comparison of two infrastructural projects connecting East and West districts across the inner city. Since the feasibility of these projects is partially based on tolls, the road pricing hypothesis is fully considered, in order to assess its effects on the demand curve, traffic flows and revenues.

Urban policy and infrastructure networks

Outline During the 1990s there may be opportunities for developing new urban policy frameworks for the management of infrastructure networks. These distributive networks provide essential water, waste collection, energy, telecommunication and transportation services and have important social, economic and environmental implications for the performance of modern cities. However, the limited urban policy links with infrastructure systems tend to facilitate the implementation of the utilities’ own programmes and priorities rather than setting a local policy agenda. Despite these constraints there is the potential for developing new urban policy models for the renewal, maintenance and provision of infrastructure systems. These models could provide the basis for integrated frameworks of urban management.

Methods of gathering data for determining the cost of underground infrastructure failure

Means of gathering the data related to the operational and repair costs associated with urban underground infrastructure networks are discussed. A proposed tabular listing of the loads, unit characteristics and elements of the repair process is presented. Using the tabular listings during the infrastructure design process permits consideration of the costs of a breakdown in operation in order to identify the engineering solutions associated with the lowest total cost, determined in the life-cycle costs accounting. On discute des moyens de rassembler les données des coûts operationels et de réparation associés aux réseaux d'infrastructure urbain sous terre. On présente une liste tabulaire des contraintes, des unités caractéristiques et des éléments de réparation. L'utilisation des listes tabulaires pendant la conception de l'infrastructure permet une étude des coûts individuels afin d'identifier les solutions techniques les moins chères globalement qui sont determinées dans la comptabilité des coûts cycliques.