Project Description:
Sustainability is well recognized as a major challenge for society for this century. Population growth, urbanization, energy costs, resource and monetary constraints, climate change, aging infrastructure, social inequality all pose acute risks to contemporary society. There is currently limited understanding of the complex and interrelated risks that such trends pose on the large scale infrastructure systems in cities, which as of 2009 housed more than half of the world’s population. New paradigms for land development, infrastructure design, and ecological restoration are needed if urban environment quality of life is to improve amidst such formidable set of constraints. This report will summarize some of the results of a three day workshop supported by the Nation Science Foundation held in Auckland, New Zealand during December of 2012. The workshop facilitators included three university professors, with three different disciplinary backgrounds (landscape architecture, civil engineering, systems analysis). The workshop focused on three topics were: 1) Functions and services provided by green infrastructure, 2) The green infrastructure implementation gradient and 3) Strategies for assessing green infrastructure performance. Deliberation regarding each of these topics was intense and wide ranging. The workshop included participants from around the worlds and took a global perspective regarding green infrastructure research needs.