Infrastructural Ecologies: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works

Despite the recent infusion of federal stimulus funds into infrastructure projects across the country — part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed by Congress in February 2009, and also the prospect of additional funding announced by the Obama administration on Labor Day this year — the United States still awaits a meaningful new deal for public works. A next generation of ground-up or rebuilt bridges, power grids, waterworks, sewers, landfills, rail systems, ports and dams demands a new direction — bold strategies to bring about a future of multi-purpose, low-carbon, resilient infrastructure, tightly coordinated with natural systems, well integrated into social contexts, and capable of adapting to a changing climate. My goal here is to describe this next generation of infrastructure, and to propose principles that might guide its development.

Unfortunately, despite its ambitious label, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act doesn’t even begin to get us to this next generation. ARRA’s investment in infrastructure — $132 billion out of the total package of $787 billion — is a fraction of current needs, and for the most part it bolsters our dependence on dirty, carbon-intensive construction, underwriting an assortment of backlogged, so-called shovel-ready projects. (As of this writing, there is insufficient detail on the breakdown of the Administration’s proposed $50 billion in additional funding to merit comment.) Twenty percent of ARRA’s infrastructure funding, or $27.5 billion, is dedicated to roads and bridges, which overshadows the $17.7 billion for mass transit and rail systems. [1] $8 billion is targeted for nuclear power plant remediation, but just $2.5 billion for renewable energy networks. The $4.5 billion allocated to basic electrical grid upgrades [2] is a mere tenth of the projected $40 to $50 billion needed. [3]

In prioritizing private over public transportation and short-changing cleaner energy projects, ARRA has undercut the Obama administration’s claim to support a green economy. Still more worrisome, unbalanced investments that favor the old over the new position us unfavorably in comparison to other industrialized nations, which are investing heavily in public transit and renewable energy. [4] Worse yet, they perpetuate America’s disproportionately high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions: approximately 20 metric tons to Europe’s 9 and India’s 1.07. [5] Ultimately, of course, ARRA was more stop-gap compromise than comprehensive vision — and no doubt the hard-fought result of tense partisan politics. Still, ARRA 2009 will be remembered as a tragically missed opportunity at a pivotal moment in national history. And now, it seems, given the tepid response to the latest proposed infusion of funding, complacency may have set in; a public that has misconstrued a short-term stimulus as a long-range solution seems more focused on shrinking government than on endorsing investments in a 21st-century American infrastructure.

Khaju Bridge, Isfahan [Figures 1, 2].

Problematic Horizons
Rated for adequacy and safety, U.S. infrastructure earned an average grade of “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009. [6] The same report contends that we need to spend $2.2 trillion (even before growth and expansion) over the next five years to repair our electric utilities, roads, bridges, transit and rail systems, water treatment facilities, dams and airports. [7] ARRA will make little dent in a deficit of this magnitude. [8]

Funded at about 3.5 percent of our total non-defense spending, and at roughly the same level since 1976, America’s infrastructure funding lags behind that of both developed and developing nations. [9] The U.S. spends on average $150 billion to the European Union’s $300 — less than one percent of our GDP, and half Europe’s percentage — despite the fact that the U.S. is three times the size of the EU. [10] This asymmetry is partly explained by the EU’s tradition of tax-based public spending, which leverages private-sector capacity to build highways, schools, waterworks and other civil structures. Infrastructure investment in the developing world also outpaces ours: relative to their GDPs, India and China spend 8 and 9 percent, respectively, on public works. [11]

Left: Great Kunda at Abaneri, 9th century [Figure 3]. Right: Pushkarni, Vijayanagara-Karnataka [Figure 4].

The recapitalization of public infrastructure is challenged not just by inadequate funding but also by governmental shortcomings and obsolete bureaucracies. Many projects are vulnerable to the vagaries of political cycles, and at the mercy of special interests and lobbyists. To cite just one of many examples: because coal transport by train is a major source of revenue, the railroad industry has almost monopolistically refused to grant easements to utilities to construct coal slurry pipelines — a more efficient means of serving power plants. [12] This kind of siloed thinking dominates the public works sector. Until the recent Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities — a collaboration among the U.S. Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Environmental Protection Agency — we’ve largely compartmentalized housing, transportation, energy and water-related enterprises. (In contrast, France, Japan and Italy have successfully integrated infrastructure planning, financing and development. [13]) For the most part we still lack the flexible organizations and financial instruments to implement complex projects across infrastructural modes as well as across state lines, and to evaluate different modes against each other. For instance, in many cities and states various governmental agencies are investing in extremely expensive airport expansions — demanded by the airline industry to relieve congestion — when ultimately U.S. transportation needs might be met more cost effectively and less carbon intensively by high-speed intercity rail. [14]

Enneus Heerma Bridge, The Netherlands, Grimshaw Architects [Figures 5 & 6].

But even beyond funding and efficiency, there is a larger imperative driving the need for next-generation infrastructure: climate scientists predict that we have two to three decades, at best, to make meaningful changes in how we live if we are to to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent profound and disruptive changes to the earth’s atmosphere. What is most troubling about ARRA is that it reinforces current patterns of land use and energy consumption, which in turn perpetuate our carbon-intensive lifestyle. Highways tie us to high CO2 and GHG emissions for their 20- to 50-year life spans; the steep cost of constructing a coal-fired power plant can take 30 to 75 years to recoup. In contrast, more energy-efficient light rail, freight lines and mass transit all typically last from 50 to 150 years.

Ecological Infrastructures
How might infrastructure systems be reimagined? How will next-generation infrastructure perform? I would like to propose four principles for a post-industrial, ecologically informed infrastructure.

First principle: Systems should be multipurpose, interconnected and synergistic. 

Rather than segregated or single purpose, our best designs should capture efficiences by integrating diverse functions. This is not a new idea: history offers many useful and indeed inspiring precedents. Inhabited bridges, for instance, were common in medieval Europe. As early as the 12th century, London Bridge not only linked the two banks of the Thames but also carried buildings as high as seven stories; water wheels located between its structural arches generated power for pumps and mills. In Isfahan, the Khaju Bridge, constructed in the 17th century, featured a center aisle for vehicles and outer ones for pedestrians; it contained sluice gates that, when closed, served to irrigate upstream gardens; and its cascading steps provided access to the Zayandeh River. [Figures 1, 2] And in the arid regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan, in Western India, step-wells built between the 11th and 16th centuries are feats of hydro-engineering informed by weather and geology, with dams that direct monsoon rains into underground aquifers and elaborate stairways that provide access to water at levels that vary seasonally; the step-wells are also social spaces, with stone-faced chambers that offer respite from the summer heat. [Figures 3, 4]

Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge, Bangladesh [Figure 7 & 8].

For today’s infrastructure, the strategy of co-location promises similar advantages.
Scheduled to be completed in 2013, New York City’s Croton Water Filtration Plant — which will occupy part of the Mosholu Golf Course in the Bronx — will be sheltered and virtually disguised by nine acres of an intensively planted green roof that will double as a driving range. Encircled by a moat consisting of biofiltration trenches, the green roof not only helps secure the facility; it also harvests and cleans stormwater to irrigate the golf course. [15] Or, for another example, underneath the city of Barcelona’s 74-acre Forum — an expanded harbor venue comprised of plazas, parks, hotels and civic facilities — is the newly enlarged Besos Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Co-location can make noxious infrastructures recede, even seem to disappear. The ubiquitous and sometimes unsightly electric substation — housing transformers, switchgear, metering and other equipment, and as such generating not just power but also noise and electro-magnetic frequency — can be concealed by other structures. [16] In Nagoya, Japan, for instance, there is a substation sited below ground near the 17th-century Nagoya Castle in Meijo Park — where an above-grade ornamental fountain both cools the electrical equipment and masks its noise. In London, there are substations beneath public parks and sidewalks. [17] Yet in the U.S. such mixed functions are often precluded by zoning restrictions and by public perceptions of nuisance uses. A rare example of co-location — grandfathered in when an earlier structure was destroyed on Sept. 11 — is a rebuilt Lower Manhattan substation at the base of 7 World Trade Center, which is artfully concealed by stainless steel panels.

Utilities can be conjoined with transportation networks. Near Amsterdam, the Enneüs Heerma Bridge carries multiple lanes of vehicular traffic, two tramlines, two bicycle lanes and pedestrian footpaths; it also carries water, sewage and other public services [Figures 5, 6]. In Bangladesh, the Bangabandhu Jamuna Bridge moves goods and passenger traffic by road and rail while also transmitting electricity, gas and telecommunication lines. [Figures 7, 8] 

Queens Plaza Redesign, New York City, Margie Ruddick Landscape Architecture/Marpillero Pollak Architects/Michael Singer [Figures 9 & 10].

To be sure, co-located and combined uses — “intermodal” in the transportation sector — have attracted ARRA funding. Cities as diverse as Minneapolis, MN, Normal, IL, Fairfield, CA, and Holyoke, MA, are constructing downtown hubs to encourage easier intermodal transfer, faster travel time and reduced GHG emissions. Scheduled to start construction this year, San Francisco’s five-story Transbay Transit Center will integrate ten regional bus and train lines, including inter-city high-speed rail. With its proposed 4.5-acre rooftop public park, the complex also integrates commercial facilities and a residential tower, which will help underwrite the $4.5-billion project and catalyze neighborhood redevelopment.

Significantly, co-location can support opportunities to use waste from one utility as energy for another. In Lille, France, a new biogas facility has been built adjacent to a city bus terminal; the facility processes organic waste that is then combined with sewage gas and used as fuel for municipal buses. [18] In New Hampshire, the state university has deployed a similar waste-to-energy, cross-sector approach. As part of its Climate Action Plan, the school constructed a gas purification facility at a nearby landfill; today methane from the landfill, which otherwise would have dissipated into the atmosphere, is piped to a cogeneration facility and used to supply 85 percent of campus energy. [19] In an unusual juxtaposition, the waste heat from a computer data farm installed in the caverns beneath Helsinki’s Uspenski Cathedral is mined as thermal energy for district heating of 500 homes, saving $500,000. [20] And in Holland, the geothermal energy extracted from the subterranean waters that flood abandoned coal mines in the town of Heerlen provides district heating and cooling, reducing energy-related CO2 emissions by 50 percent. [21]

Second principle: Infrastructure should work with natural processes. 

Once we recognize that our built infrastructures are in essence man-made extensions of natural flows — of water cycles, of carbon created millennia ago by solar energy, etc. — we might more closely model our own constructed networks on complex organic ecosystems.

Left: Battery Park City, NY [Figure 11]. Right: NYC Heliostats at Teardrop Park [Figure 12].

Sustainable design strives for an elegant symbiosis between man-made and natural systems. Green roofs are a good example: they insulate, collect and treat stormwater; extend the durability of roof membranes; provide recreational spaces; and perform ambient cooling. What if we apply this principle to public rights-of-way — to the ubiquitous cross-section of sidewalk, street trees, parking and travel lanes and, below grade, utility and stormwater systems? In the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, in New York City, vehicular and parking lanes will be narrowed or eliminated, which will yield productive green space. New street trees are being planted not in small pits but in continuous trenches, providing space for roots to grow and for stormwater to be stored for irrigation. The resulting larger tree canopy will shade the pavement and cool the air through evapo-transpiration [22]; this will reduce stress on the asphalt paving and extend its longevity. A few miles away, in another borough of New York, the chaotic and much debilitated hardscape of the Queens Plaza intermodal hub — over which hovers a ramp to the Queensboro Bridge and two elevated trains — is being transformed into a verdant park that will process stormwater through stream channels and mitigate air and noise pollution. [Figures 9, 10]

Other innovations can help better manage urban solar resources. In Battery Park City, in Manhattan, rooftop heliostats, which track and reflect solar energy, redirect hours of sunlight to a children’s park that would otherwise be shaded by tall buildings. [Figures 11, 12] The use of light-colored paving for streets and sidewalks, a slight and indeed low-tech infrastructural adjustment, not only reduces urban heat island effects but also improves reflectivity at night, boosting the efficacy of street lighting.

Naka Incineration Plant, Hiroshima, Japan, Taniguchi and Associates [Figures 13 & 14].

Third principle: Infrastructure should improve social contexts and serve local constituencies. 

Next-generation infrastructure will need to withstand hazards related to increasing heat, intensifying storms, rising sea levels and other meteorological stressors. As temperatures rise, for example, power plants lose efficiency, transportation and transmission networks are vulnerable to damage from overheating, and water resources are depleted due to evaporation. Infrastructural adaptations to such challenges might produce new synergies. The Netherlands has built both both active and passive means to cope with the storm surges that will result from rising waters and saltwater intrusion. Active solutions involve artificial, constructed barriers, which are costly. Passive solutions are cheaper and more resilient; these include the “living with water” approach: the country has set aside farmland to temporarily accept and also impound excess flood waters as a hedge against summer drought. 

Left: Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility. Greenpoint, New York [Figure 15]. Right: Nature Walk, New York City, NY [Figure 16].

In arid Oman and the Grand Canary Islands, prototypes of seawater greenhouses use ocean water to passively cool and humidify food-growing chambers; they use solar energy to evaporate seawater and condense fresh water for irrigation and other uses; and at the same time they address chronic regional shortages of water and food. In the inland country of Zimbabwe, constructed solutions to desertification are being bypassed altogether in favor of natural adaptations; for instance, farmers are rotating livestock so that the cows both graze and fertilize grasslands — a low-tech adjustment that has served to restore millions of acres of eroded, desiccated soil, and almost miraculously replenished aquifers and surface waters. [23]  [Figure 17]

How do we get there?
Designing appropriate, sustainable technologies may be the least challenging aspect of our American infrastructural dilemma. The more daunting problem, as noted, is our dysfunctional governance — a political culture that seems unwilling to commit to implementing what we know we need, and know how to make. Yet given the scale of the undertaking, our new infrastructure will need sustained public commitment, especially at the federal level. What to do? We could follow the lead of other industrialized nations that have reengineered their ministries. Australia, for instance, has established a Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and set up an advisory taskforce, Infrastructure Australia. France has recently merged its transportation, ecology, energy and sustainable development agencies. [24] Or we could install an infrastructure czar, with sufficient authority and creativity, and equipped with cross-agency jurisdiction.

But perhaps there’s a more nimble alternative, a more strategic, even acupunctural, approach: we could begin to test innovative infrastructures, and the fiscal and organizational processes that might bring them about, before setting up new and nationwide frameworks.

Seawater Greenhouse Prototype Diagram [Figure 17].

Imagine, for instance, a small federal program aligned with the proposed National Infrastructure Bank, which would be charged with seeding progressive investment agendas and identifying promising infrastructural systems. [25] This new program could privilege projects that were multi-purpose, carbon-efficient and resilient, and based upon well-developed regional transportation or public utility plans. It might recruit domestic or foreign investment, award grants, and provide loans or tax credits. It might award challenge grants, for example, to public/private infrastructural partnerships that integrate land use, housing, transportation, and energy, or that foster co-location and enhance community life. [26] Such an enterprise would be charged with assessing social, economic and environmental returns on investment and ensuring political neutrality, accountability and transparency. [27] Importantly, it would also focus on regulatory coordination and on interagency and cross-sector collaboration, and it would mandate speed, quality and other performance criteria. Lastly, it could promote alternative infrastructural delivery models, with design and construction procurements and contracts that reward innovative, cooperative accomplishments.

America’s infrastructure needs are dauntingly large, complex and urgent. Ultimately, if we are to regain not only economic stability but also prosperity, if we are to remain a creative and competitive nation, we will need to demonstrate the capacity for holistic thinking and integrative action.