Next Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works

by Hillary Brown

The 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis-St. Paul quickly became symbolic of the debilitated interstate highway system—and of what many critics see as America’s disinvestment in its infrastructure. The extreme vulnerability of single-purpose, aging infrastructure was highlighted once again when Hurricane Sandy churned its way across the northeast United States. Inundating New York City’s vital arteries, floodwaters overwhelmed tunnels and sewers; closed bridges; shut down the electrical substations that control mass transit; curtailed gas supplies; and destroyed streets, buildings, and whole neighborhoods. For days and on into weeks, failures triggered by floodwaters deprived millions of electricity, heat, and water services.

How can our complex, interdependent utilities support an urbanizing world, subject to carbon constraints and the impacts of climate change? How might these critical networks be made more efficient, less environmentally damaging, and more resilient? Such questions are at the heart of the approaches and initiatives explored in Next Generation Infrastructure . With a better understanding of the possible connections between different services, not only can inadvertent disruptions be reduced, but crosscutting benefits and lower costs will be possible. Next Generation Infrastructure highlights hopeful examples from around the world, ranging from the Mount Poso cogeneration plant in California to urban rainwater harvesting in Seoul, South Korea, to the multi-purpose Marina Barrage project in Singapore. Five bold organizing objectives are proposed that, in the hands of decision-makers and designers, will help bring about a future of multipurpose, low-carbon, resilient infrastructure that is tightly coordinated with natural and social systems.

In their conception and design, the innovative projects highlighted in Next Generation Infrastructure encourage us to envision infrastructure within a larger economic, environmental, and social context, and to share resources across systems, reducing costs and extending benefits. Through this systems approach to lifeline services, we can begin to move toward a more resilient future.

Genres: Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2014

Reviews

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synergy. A simple word that is commonly used in the world today. A world that keeps us to overcome physical distances, and facilitates the collaboration between different fields and sectors through new technologies. But is it truly being utilized?

In her newest book, Next-Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works, Hillary Brown confronts this question head on. How are we to expand and move onward in a world that demands this of its resources when our systems are complex and antiquated? How will these systems fair against climate change? Will they help or hinder the process of decarbonization? These are just a handful of the tough questions addressed within.

The one thing that was certain after reading the book is that there is no clear answer to the collection of queries the world is presenting. But there are paths that we can begin to establish that will lead us to a more positive future. A future within which a synergistic infrastructural systems approach will undoubtedly be a key factor.

Every point made in the book was meticulous and bore a strong connection to current and future problems being faced around the world. The short form, and a paraphrasing of the first chapter, is that we need to be bold in our actions. Whether we are looking at issues of drought, flooding, coastline resiliency, or public awareness, every topic that the book chose to embrace was relevant and purposeful.

There are frightening statistics (“The United States loses 1.7 trillion gallons of drinking water annually through system leakage and 240,000 water main breaks per year.”) contrasted with hopeful yet realistic methods and models for change (“The alternative paradigm proposed in this volume calls for more diversified, distributed, and interconnected infrastructural assets that simulate the behavior of natural systems.”), all while maintaining five tenements of which these next-generation infrastructures are based:

-Systems should be multipurpose, interconnected, and synergistic
-Infrastructure should contribute few or no carbon emissions
-Infrastructure should work with natural processes
-Infrastructure should improve social contexts and serve local constituencies
-Infrastructure should be resilient and adapt to predicted changes brought about by an unstable global climate

According to Brown, infrastructural projects of the past maintained their “specialist” ability and worked for one goal - doing it well. Unfortunately, as we progress and our demands grow, these single-use pieces of our society are no longer able to maintain their output in an ecologically friendly way. We are damming more rivers, displacing silt and eroding shorelines; we are burning more fossil fuel to keep up with demand, causing a failure to meet key climate figures that we (no matter the nation) have pledged to uphold; we are not planning for an adaptive future, where resiliency is our first priority. Furthermore, quick fixes often cost us more in the long-term than reinventing some systems from the ground up, and Brown does an exemplary job highlighting these facts.

While the book is heavily focused on U.S. infrastructure, the basic lessons apply to any nation seeking a more plausible future in terms of their reliance on natural systems and man-made infrastructure. The question that one often returns to is why we seem to have difficulty changing? What impassable roadblocks seem to confront us so profoundly that change is seems never to be an option?

Brown, too, points out the often quoted “Business As Usual” approach to life and attributes it to one of the main reasons change isn’t being driven. The question still remains though of how to force a wedge in between this thought process, and Brown raises an interesting concept of weaving the general populous back into these infrastructural programs in order to transparently show people how change is occurring and allow regular individuals the opportunity chance to see why making a change is imperative, if we wish to jump tracks to a more positive plan for our future.

However these questions are ultimately answered, our Next-Generation Infrastructure will undoubtedly need to meet the concepts laid out by Brown. Not merely because of her background and expertise, but because it has become a running theme throughout many different publications and lectures that society needs to be included again. We can no longer sit back and hope for changes to happen. Instead, we collectively must be invested in our municipalities and their plans for our infrastructural futures. It is now common knowledge that we must cut carbon emissions drastically. But we must also rekindle the social integration that makes us such a strong and resilient species.

While simple and accessible, Next-Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works offers great insight into a sector of our world that needs one of the largest overhauls.

[Rob Best · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilary Brown's book advances some exciting thoughts about infrastructure for the future, and some really interesting case studies for next generation infrastructure. Her thoughts on the tenets of post-industrial works are really appropriate and fascinating guidelines for thinking about future projects. Her project examples show good integration of multiple systems and technologies and good mixing of soft and hard infrastructure.

What leaves a bit to be desired is pushing the concept further to design guidelines, implementable steps, and how to actually examine appropriateness for your site and your project. As an engineering and planning student who researches similar topics, I would have loved to hear her thoughts on how to put in practice the ideas that were advanced for any site.