Introduction

to Urban services and Infrastructure Part 1

In this video I will give you an introduction to the theme Urban services and Infrastructures,
and will shortly address how this challenge is related to general notions of fundamental
needs and sustainability.

In the end, the main goal of any development is to achieve a prosperous society.

But what does that mean?

This is hard to answer, as it will be different for all of us, depending on different living
conditions in our world.

The definition of prosperity now, depends on the needs of future generations.

UN Habitat introduced some years ago the City-Prosperity Index.

The ranking of cities regarding prosperity is based on five indicators, or dimensions:

Productivity, Infrastructure development, Quality of life, Equity and social inclusion and
Environmental sustainability.

In a way these five dimensions relate strongly to the main perspectives, or focuses to
achieve sustainable development, often referred at as Triple P: People, Planet and Profit.

Where the notion of Profit was changed in the 2002 Johannesburg Treaty into Prosperity.

Within this Triple P approach the different 24 aspects to address sustainability in our living
environment are framed.

In this Planet aspects relate to the technical aspects, or so-called stocks and flows in the
local environment, like energy, space, water and waste.

The People aspects, as shown here are related to liveability, like air or soil contamination,
safety and quality related aspects, such as available green and social inclusion.

The Profit related aspects concern economic vitality and future values, such as local
employment, flexibility and robustness.

Together they address what we could frame the urban services, which often are related to
infrastructure development.

And this aspect was highlighted, as you saw before, within this City Prosperity Index of UN-
Habitat as a separate indicator of prosperity.

Why?

This is related to our dependence on areas around cities, dependence to resources, to other
places and cities.

And the availability of (often cheap) transport.

This has led to what some call the interconnected society, where urbanized area consist of
different urban nodes, which are highly interconnected.

This is also called poly-centric urban development.

Like shown here for example for the north-western part of Europe, for the area between
London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam.

Triple P, and in particular the notion of prosperity forms the basis of Sustainable
Development.

This notion was introduced in the Brundtland Report in 1987.

In simple words it means that our children need to inherit an equal or better world than we
have ourselves.

So sustainable development is not a static notion.

It also relates strongly to how we try to achieve sustainability, and respond to environmental
pressure and aspects of change, such as climate change.

Here, two actions are distinguished tackling causes, or doing things the right way called
Mitigation and handling impacts or responding to negative effects called Adaption.

The Intercontinental Panel for Climate Change, calculated the potential for different sectors,
to mitigate, and by doing so where most potential to achieve carbon reductions are.

As you can see in the graph, in particular buildings, transport and energy supply are key
sectors to achieve positive change, towards a sustainable society.

Often such change, be it mitigation or adaptation is related to trying to achieve to change

the way we organize our society, from one based in linear flows of input and output.

Into one which is based on circular flows, where output can become input again.

Often referred to as renewables.

And this is strongly related to this videos theme of Urban Services and Infrastructures.

Infra is Latin, and refers to below.

Infrastructures are defined as the essential, or fundamental facilities and systems serving a
country, city of area, including the services and facilities necessary for its economy to
function.

Of course it doesnt refer only to structures below the ground, infrastructures are all over
to provide our society with essential services, such as transportation of people, goods,
energy and water.

The importance of infrastructure for our society has increased significantly.

As UN Habitat already implied by including infrastructure as a main indicator of prosperity

At the moment infrastructure often drives urban development. Which is referred to as the
existing paradigm, as originally this was the other way around namely that urban
development defined infrastructures.

For this reason I will take you one step back.

To the need for infrastructure.

What defines the need for infrastructure?

This is called the Suprastructure, and defined as the different standards of societal needs
and goals.

To define the need for infrastructure we should look at the relation between infrastructures,
buildings and systems with the societal goals that are aimed at.

There are so-called fundamental needs to support societal goals.

These fundamental needs are the same for every human on earth.

They are: support (like provision of food etc.), protection (like a roof above the head, etc.),
affection, understanding, participation, relaxation, expression and freedom.

Cities are physical expressions of social structures and the fulfilment of these fundamental
needs.

Activities to sustain fundamental needs can be called urban services. Examples are
transportation of material flows, supply of water, energy etcetera, but also housing or
cultivation and provision of food.

Such urban services can be materialized.

This is what we know as transportation infrastructure, public utilities like sewerage, ICT et
cetera.

But this also concerns urban ordening and planning and land development.