10 1557@mre 2018 14

MRS Energy & Sustainability: A Review Journal
page 1 of 15
© Materials Research Society, 2019
doi:10.1557/mre.2018.14
Review
An approach to designing Sybil Derrible, Complex and Sustainable Urban Networks (CSUN)
Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607-
7023, USA
sustainable urban infrastructure Address all correspondence to Sybil Derrible at [email protected]
(Received 6 May 2018; accepted 10 October 2018)
ABSTRACT
This article offers a conceptual understanding and easily applicable guidelines for sustainable urban infrastructure design by focusing
on the demand for and supply of the services provided by seven urban infrastructure systems.
For more than 10,000 years, cities have evolved continuously, often shaped by the challenges they had to face. Similarly, we can imagine
that cities will have to evolve again in the future to address their current challenges. Specifically, urban infrastructure will need to adapt
and use less energy and fewer resources while becoming more resilient. In this article, starting with a definition of sustainability, two urban
infrastructure sustainability principles (SP) are introduced: (i) controlling the demand and (ii) increasing the supply within reason, which
are then applied to seven urban infrastructure systems: water, electricity, district heating and cooling and natural gas, telecommunica-
tions, transport, solid waste, and buildings. From these principles, a four-step urban infrastructure design (UID) process is compiled that
can be applied to any infrastructure project: (i) controlling the demand to reduce the need for new infrastructure, (ii) integrating a needed
service within the current infrastructure, (iii) making new infrastructure multifunctional to provide for other infrastructure systems, and
(iv) designing for specific interdependencies and decentralizing infrastructure if possible. Overall, by first recognizing that urban infrastructure
systems are inherently integrated and interdependent, this article offers several strategies and guidelines to help design sustainable urban
infrastructure systems.
Keywords: sustainability; infrastructure; energy generation; transportation; water
settled together in cities because as a society we tend to live
DISCUSSION POINTS “better” than individually. Despite the countless utopias that
depict small and agrarian settlements, and despite the cycles of
• H
ow can looking at the demand for and supply of infrastructure urban growth and decline, cities keep getting larger and more
services help redefine how urban infrastructure is planned, complex. This progress is not “free,” however. Tremendous
designed, and operated?
amounts of energy are needed to plan, design, build, and oper-
• T
wo pragmatic principles for sustainable urban infrastructure ate cities to meet the needs of their residents. During most of
system design. the history of humanity, this energy largely came from the sun,
providing the energy to grow crops for food and wood for hous-
• D
esign strategies for seven urban infrastructure systems: water, ing, heating, and cooking, and from the wind, providing the
electricity, district heating and cooling and natural gas, power to transport people and goods. Thanks to the discovery
telecommunications, transport, solid waste, and buildings. and wide use of fossil fuels, incredible amounts of energy
became available in the 1800s. Indeed, fossil fuels can easily be
• A
four-step process to help design sustainable and resilient
infrastructure systems. moved/shipped and they possess high energy densities. Thanks
to these new sources of energy, the global population soared
from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion in 2011 and to a forecasted 11
to 12 billion by 2100.1 Moreover, in 2008, and for the first time
Introduction in the history of humanity, more than 50% of the world popula-
In Democracy in the Politics, Aristotle wrote: “The city-state tion lived in cities—this proportion is predicted to increase to
comes into being for the sake of living, but it exists for the sake 68% by 2050.2 At least two major problems will necessarily have
of living well.” For more than 10,000 years, humans have to be addressed, however, to keep cities thriving. First, fossil
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https://doi.org/10.1557/mre.2018.14
fuels are finite resources. Even if there is much uncertainty about The main goal of this article is twofold. First, it is to present two
when they will run out, and no matter how long it will take, they principles of sustainability and apply them to seven urban infra-
will run out if we do not stop consuming them. Second, and per- structure systems. Second, based on these two principles, it is to
haps more pressing, the burning of fossil fuels generates green- offer a four-step process that can be followed before designing any
house gases (GHG), and as a society, we have emitted such a new infrastructure project. The article focuses purely on urban
significant amount of GHG that we have altered the climate. In infrastructure systems and more specifically on water, electricity,
fact, many scientists agree that we have entered a new geological district heating and cooling and natural gas, telecommunications,
era, the Anthropocene, from the Greek anthro for “human” as transport, solid waste, and buildings. In particular, in the future,
this change was caused by human activity. The cities that have urban infrastructure will likely become much more integrated
therefore provided humanity the amazing progress that we now and decentralized,8 and institutions that operate infrastructure
enjoy have also been partly responsible for climate change. But systems will likely have to change dramatically as well.3
there is hope, and this hope again lies in cities. In the next section, the two principles of sustainability for
Cities are constantly evolving systems, and throughout the urban infrastructure are defined. In section “Application of the
history, cities have been largely shaped by the challenges they two sustainable principles to urban infrastructure,” these two
had to face.3 For example, from early human settlements in principles are applied to seven urban infrastructure systems.
the Neolithic era to Amsterdam or Tokyo, many cities built In section “An approach to urban infrastructure design,” a new
networks of canals to help for the transport of goods and as a paradigm for urban infrastructure design is proposed, which is
source of water. Ancient Greek towns were oriented based on based on a four-step process. Finally, a brief conclusion is pro-
the winds—to prevent the spread of diseases and to keep cool vided in the last section. Section “Application of the two sus-
in the summer. Large aqueducts were constructed to bring tainable principles to urban infrastructure” is disproportionally
freshwater to Rome and to other cities in the Roman Empire. larger than the other sections as it is the core of this article and
London’s building codes were updated after the Great Fire of infrastructure systems are discussed individually.
1666 in favor of nonflammable materials like brick, as were
the building codes of many cities that had to deal with similar
events. A large part of the city of Chicago was literally raised by Two principles of sustainability
close to 2 meters to create a sewer system to solve its flooding The terms sustainability and sustainable development (used
and sanitary sewer problems. Starting in the 20th century, interchangeably in this article) have become mainstream, both
many cities have been building skyscrapers in large part to be in the scientific community and with the general public. While
able to accommodate an ever-increasing urban population; in it is practically impossible to come up with a perfect definition,
seismic areas, many of these buildings are fitted with dampers many people have a general appreciation for the concept of sus-
to maintain their structural integrity during an earthquake. It tainability. In the context of this article, sustainability is taken
therefore seems logical to hypothesize that cities in the 21st cen- as the literal meaning of being able to sustain an activity forever
tury will be transformed in response to the current challenges (as opposed to environmental sustainability, for instance, that
they have to face, and from an infrastructure viewpoint there are looks at the impact of an activity on the environment). For exam-
at least two major challenges that need to be addressed. First, cit- ple, in addition to environmental concerns, the use of fossil fuels
ies will have to dramatically reduce their energy and resource is not sustainable simply because fossil fuels are available in finite
consumption. From electricity generation to water distribution resources; thus, it is impossible to sustain consuming them for-
systems and transport, too much energy and too many resources ever. More generally, the definition of sustainability adopted is
are needed to build and operate cities, directly affecting the envi- from the 1987 document Our Common Future by the World
ronmental limits that the planet can sustain.4–6 Second, as a Commission on Environment and Development,9 often called
direct impact of climate change, extreme weather events are the Brundtland Report from the Chairman of the Commission,
becoming more frequent and more severe, and cities will there- G.H. Brundtland. The definition is as follows:
fore have to adapt and become more resilient—as most agree that
it is now too late to be able to fully mitigate climate change.7 “Sustainable development is development that meets the
A feature of these two challenges is that they affect all needs of the present without compromising the ability of
urban infrastructure systems. Put differently, they are not future generations to meet their own needs.”
only water challenges, transport challenges, electricity chal-
lenges, and solid waste challenges; instead they are urban There are various elements in this definition that need to be
challenges. As a response, the engineering profession will have discussed. First, we see that humans have “needs” that need to
to adapt accordingly and partially reinvent itself. In particu- be “met.” We can view these “needs” as a demand and “meet-
lar, the various fields of engineering, computer science, ing these needs” as a supply. Considering these elements as a
urban planning, and other important fields will have to work demand and a supply works well with infrastructure as infra-
together toward a new urban engineering. Moreover, in the structure is built to provide a service. Demand can also be seen
context of this article, both challenges are integrated within as a consumption C, and supply can be seen as a production P.
a general framework of “sustainability” (the term is defined The definition from the Brundtland report also adds an ele-
in the next section). ment of time as the future generation should also be able to
2 n MRS Energy & Sustainability // V O L U M E 5 // e 1 5 // www.mrs.org/energy-sustainability-journal

meet their needs. Both consumption and production are therefore consumption rates for all the energy and resources that are con-
functions of time t in the form C(t) and P(t). More specifically, sumed. In fact, we often do not even know how much of some-
because both consumption and production need to be sustained thing can be produced or how much of it is consumed. This
over time, we should focus on the rate of change of consumption problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the production
and production. Sustainability can therefore be achieved when the and consumption of many resources depend on the production
rate of change of production is greater than or equal to the rate of and consumption of other resources. Determining whether we
change of consumption or in the equation form: are in a sustainable, tolerable, or unsustainable scenario is there-
fore far from trivial in most instances. What we can do instead,
d P dC
− ≥ 0.(1) however, is to aim in the right direction by lowering consumption
dt dt
and increasing the supply in desirable ways. More formally, we can
To take a simple example, the rate at which electricity is
derive two sustainability principles directly from Eq. (1):
generated should be greater than or at least equal to the rate at
which it is consumed. Although this may seem obvious at first, (i) Controlling the demand.
it is not. Electricity demand on a hot summer day can overpass (ii) Increasing the supply within reason.
the total capacity of all power plants to generate electricity,
resulting in power outages. Sustainable Principle 1 (SP1) essentially states that dC/dt
To be fair, Eq. (1) is reductive and imperfect—production and should be as small as possible. Sustainable Principle 2 (SP2)
consumption functions can be highly nonlinear—but it offers a states that if dP/dt needs to be increased, then it should be
conceptual foundation to analyze whether a situation is sustain- done in a reasonable way.
able or not. We can also recognize that production and consump- Put differently, SP1 recommends energy and resource con-
tion functions can change over time, and therefore, the goal sumption to be as low as possible, regardless of the infrastructure
here is to ensure that Eq. (1) is satisfied forever—that is, we take system—for example, by lowering water consumption and solid
the limit when time t tends to infinity. waste generation. If demand cannot be decreased and new forms of
Figure 1 shows a graphical representation of Eq. (1). In the supply must be added, then SP2 recommends that these forms be
far left, the production is systematically larger than consump- as sustainable as possible—for example, using renewable energy
tion, resulting in a sustainable scenario. Solar energy offers an sources and public transportation. Although these two principles
example as we are far from consuming all the solar energy that cannot ensure a sustainable consumption of energy and resources,
we receive.10 In the far right, consumption has overpassed pro- they can at least set us in the right direction. To further explore
duction, resulting in an unsustainable scenario. Rockström’s how these two principles can work in practice, they are applied to
planetary boundaries4 offer a good example, but to take a more seven urban infrastructure systems in the next section.
practical example to cities, many roads experience a level of
traffic congestion greater than the designed capacity. Application of the two sustainable principles to urban
Finally, in the middle, production is currently larger than con-
sumption, but we can see that the situation will soon change, infrastructure
resulting in a tolerable scenario that requires action to ensure that While the two sustainability principles can be applied to
consumption does not overpass production. A good example is almost any energy and resources, this article focuses purely on
the use of fossil fuels for power generation as it is tolerable at urban infrastructure. As a result, many relevant resources are
the moment, but as they are finite resources, consumption will not discussed, such as food and solid waste management, to which
indubitably overpass production in the future if we do not stop con- the same two principles can be applied.
suming fossil fuels—this is true only from a supply perspective as More precisely, the following infrastructure systems are
we have already reached the unsustainable scenario from a GHG included: water, electricity, district heating and cooling and nat-
perspective as the climate is changing. ural gas, telecommunications, transport, solid waste, and build-
While Eq. (1) is conceptually appealing, we then need to rec- ings. District heating and cooling and natural gas are grouped
ognize that it is practically impossible to measure production and together because they deal mostly with space conditioning
Figure 1. Production and consumption in sustainability.
MRS Energy & Sustainability // V O L U M E 5 // e 1 5 // www.mrs.org/energy-sustainability-journal n 3

(i.e., heating and cooling)—with the exception of natural gas Water
that is also used for water heating and for cooking (not discussed Water is often credited as the most essential infrastructure ser-
here). Table 1 shows a nonexhaustive summary of the primary vice. Not only is it essential to life, water distribution systems have
ways in which these infrastructure systems are demanded and also taken a central role in the effort to clean up cities and to rid
supplied, and the primary units used. Each infrastructure sys- cities of deadly diseases at least since the 19th century.11 It is there-
tem is analyzed one by one in this section, starting with water. fore not surprising that most cities in the world are located next to
Table 1. Urban infrastructure production and consumption.
Infrastructure Production/supply Consumption/demand Units

Water • Rainfall (surface water • Potable water • Volume (L or m3)
and groundwater) • Nonpotable water • Flow rate (L/day or m3/s)
• Desalination • Sanitary sewer • Depth (mm)
• Water treatment • Stormwater
• Water distribution
• Wastewater collection
• Wastewater treatment
Electricity • Electricity • Space conditioning • Power (W)

• Lighting • Energy (W h or J)
• Cooking
• Appliances
• Other uses
District heating • Natural gas • Hot air • Energy (J or W h)

and cooling and • Steam • Cool air • Volume (m3 of gas)
natural gas • Chilled water • Heat (cooking)
Telecommunications • Information (virtual world) • Information (virtual world) • Information (bit)

• Cables • Reliable and fast service • Bandwidth (bit/s)
• Servers • Cables • Cables (meters)
• Routers • Server space • Server space (bytes)
• Exchange platforms • Routers • Routers (units)
• Satellites • Other telecommunication devices
• Other telecommunication devices
Transport • Physical space in the form • Physical space in terms of traffic • Trip
of roads and pathways (automobile, walk, bike), seats and • Area (m2)
(bike and walk) standing room (shared mobility), • Distance traveled (km)
• Shared-mobility services and parking, across a period of time • Time (h)
such as public transport, • Speed (km/h)
bike sharing, and ride sharing • Volume of fuel
(L of gasoline)
• Energy (W h or J)
Solid waste • Solid waste collection • Municipal solid waste • Mass (t or kg)
• Waste separation and • Construction and demolition debris • Energy (MJ/kg or W h/kg)
transformation (e.g., recycling • Hazardous solid waste
and composting)
• Final waste disposal
Buildings • Physical space • Physical space • Area (m2)

• Materials • Weight (kg)

water bodies—one of the largest cities not located next to a large strategies include large bioswales and large catchment areas
water body is Beijing, which suffers from severe water shortage that limit or even prevent the flow of stormwater into the
problems.12 The general realm of “water” comes in various forms sewers; public parks and outdoor sports facilities (i.e., soccer
in cities. Table 1 lists six production/supply infrastructure services field) can be used as retention basins during extreme rainfalls.
for water that can be divided into three groups: water consump- Strategies depend on whether a sewer system is combined or
tion, wastewater management, and stormwater management. separated. In combined sewer systems (i.e., combined sani-
In terms of demand, SP1 applies mostly to water consumption, tary and stormwater systems), an overflow leads to the disposal
which has a direct impact on the amount of wastewater generated of raw wastewater into natural water bodies. Moreover, stormwa-
(i.e., sanitary sewer). The demand for water has grown substan- ter infrastructure could also be made smarter to respond in real
tially since the 1700s, especially because water played such a major time to precipitation events.23 Figure 2 shows three examples of
role to “clean” up cities. In Paris, in 1700, water demand was esti- low-impact development strategies: (i) permeable concrete (here
mated to be 5 L per person per day.13 This number then increased being poured); (ii) rain garden integrated with permeable pavers
to 7 L and then to 10 L by 1817; until 1850, a water consumption of (an elevated catchment basin is located in the middle of the rain
20 L per person per day was generally accepted. Water consump- garden to accept excess runoff); and (iii) bioswales (this one is
tion in the United States was around 11–19 L per person per day also engineered to naturally treat stormwater).
around 1800.14 In the late 1800s, with the general movement When it comes to water, both SP1 and SP2 are important.
toward making cities cleaner and healthier, water distribution sys- In terms of water consumption, SP1 is particularly important,
tems were created, and water consumption increased to about and most cities can implement water conservation strategies.
100 L per person per day. By 2000, the commonly accepted aver- Plus, urban water distribution systems should arguably change
age water consumption was 380 L (i.e., 100 gal) per person per day substantially in the future, perhaps toward a water microgrid.
for household use (i.e., not accounting for commercial and indus- In terms of stormwater management, SP2 offers substantial
trial use) in the United States,15 but water-scarce areas such as benefits to prevent or mitigate urban floods, hence increasing
Israel and Singapore were closer to 150 L, mostly using low-flow, the sustainability of cities.
low-use, and low-flush appliances and other water conservation
strategies. Water consumption can be further decreased, for exam- Electricity
ple, by reusing gray water for toilet use that accounts for about one From its humble beginning with Thomas Edison’s 1882 Pearl
quarter of the total household water consumption in the United Street Station in New York City, electricity has arguably become
States.16 Applying SP1 is particularly important when it comes to the most pervasive of all services supplied by infrastructure
water as people increasingly tend to concentrate in cities (i.e., systems. Some even claim that the electricity grid is the larg-
smaller distribution of population across space), while sources of est complex system ever built by humanity.24 In a column
water are not growing. In fact, climate change is adding significant published in Decision Analysis Today,25 I also briefly dis-
uncertainty in future rainfall patterns, and water shortages cussed how, to some extent, the Filipino island of Bohol was
might become even more common in the future, as was the case less affected by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake (with its epi-
in Cape Town (South Africa) in spring 2018. center in Bohol) than by a typhoon that hit Leyte (a neighbor-
As a supply, water infrastructure can be increased in two ing island of Bohol) because Leyte supplied Bohol with
major ways. First, the current water distribution systems can electricity and the typhoon had knocked out the electricity
be renovated to decrease leakage rates that can be dramatic in supply to Bohol for three weeks (no electricity notably meant
some cities; the general assumption in the United States is no running water and toilet for three weeks). What is more,
around 6–16%,17,18 but some cities such as London and Mexico we often forget that the quantities of electricity as a primary
City (about 30%),19,20 and Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (about energy source are negligible on the Earth. This means that
50%) have much higher leakage rates.21 More broadly, however, raw energy, including thermal, mechanical, and chemical,
the general practice of water distribution should change. has to be converted to produce electricity, and yet so much of
Currently, massive systems are built and operated, sometimes it is consumed.
with thousands of kilometers of pipes that are constantly The demand for electricity has grown substantially over
under pressure (around 300 kPa or 45 psi). Effort should be time. In 1950, the average yearly household consumption
put into designing smaller systems—akin to electric microg- was around 1.6 MW h in the United States,26 and this number
rids (next section)—that could be both more sustainable and grew to 10.8 MW h by 201627—although there are significant
resilient, while delivering an adequate service. Second, small discrepancies within and across states. Figure 3 shows the
and large floods induced by major precipitation events have evolution of the total and per household electricity consump-
become common in many cities, primarily because surface areas tion in the United States from 1960 to 2014.28,29 There are
have been covered by impermeable materials like asphalt and several ways to apply SP1 to electricity. First of all, electricity
concrete. Making cities more permeable, especially with low- is the primary source of power for air-conditioning systems,
impact development (LID) strategies such as green infra- and better building design and insulation, and better operation
structure, offers great potential to reduce stormwater run- of air-conditioning systems could lead to substantial electric-
off22 and fits well within SP2. Small LID strategies include ity savings; in a previous study, we showed that overcooling
rain barrels, rain gardens, and small bioswales. Larger LID commercial buildings in the United States were responsible

Figure 2. Examples of low-impact development strategies.
for an additional consumption of about 100,000 GW h in fossil fuel-powered electricity generation plants. Plus, as a pre-
201230 (about 8% of the total electricity consumption from dictable and controllable source of power, nuclear energy can
commercial buildings). Moreover, when electricity is used be used to balance renewable energy sources that generally pro-
for space heating, here again, electricity consumption can be duce electricity intermittently, unless hydroelectricity is an
reduced by better insulating and designing buildings and by option (as output is predictable and controllable akin to nuclear
better operating heating systems. Heat pumps are also pref- energy). A second consideration about electricity is not related
erable to electric radiators as they consume about five times to emissions but to size. It is uncertain at the moment how sus-
less electricity to provide the same heat input—we will discuss tainable it is to maintain a large electricity grid as is the case at
them in the next section. From Fig. 3, we can see that both the time of writing. The rationale has been that larger grids
household level and total consumption seem to stabilize, but offer increasing economies of scale and more stability as elec-
the overall electricity consumption is unlikely to decrease in tric loads can be balanced more easily, but smaller and more
the future as virtually everything we do requires electricity, manageable electricity grids may be preferable not only from a
and increasingly, it also requires some sort of telecommuni- sustainability viewpoint but also from a resilience viewpoint.
cations that require electricity, hence the need to apply SP2. Although we will not dwell on the subject, a significant body of
When it comes to electricity supply, SP2 is key. First of all, literature exists on energy storage,32 the smart grid, and the
effort should be put into using sustainable energy sources to microgrid.33–36
generate electricity. By sustainable, again, what is meant is For electricity, considering electricity consumption will likely
sources that can be used forever, and these include all renewable increase further in the future, following SP2 is paramount to
energy sources such as geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, tide, achieve sustainability.
wave, and solar photovoltaic—although solar thermal (normally
more efficient31) can also be used to reduce electricity use when District heating and cooling and natural gas
electricity is used for water heating, thus contributing to SP1. District heating and cooling systems, and natural gas systems,
The burning of biomass applies to SP2 as well. Arguably, nuclear are also commonly present in cities around the world. From an
energy also applies to SP2, at least in the medium term, as there engineering perspective, the two systems are vastly different.
are ample sources of nuclear fuels on the Earth, and nuclear In fact, district heating and cooling systems often directly use
energy contributes considerably fewer GHG emissions than electricity and/or natural gas. Moreover, district heating and
cooling systems are mostly built for large building complexes,
such as office, university, and hospital complexes, as well as
in central business districts (they are less common in smaller
residential and commercial buildings). They are combined
here simply because they offer the same service, that is, space
conditioning. In other words, what is demanded (i.e., space com-
fort) is similar. The only exception is that natural gas can also be
used for cooking and for water heating.
In this section, the focus is purely on space conditioning
(i.e., heating and cooling) as it represents the largest consumers
of energy in buildings. Figure 4 shows 2015 average residential
building energy use trends by U.S. regions.37 The percentages
above each bar show the contribution of space conditioning
Figure 3. Evolution of total and household electricity consumption in the toward the total energy use. We can see that on average, space
United States, 1960–2014. conditioning accounts for about 55% of building energy use,
although climate has a large impact. Similar trends are found in

be preferable (see details here40) from a GHG viewpoint.
From a more general perspective of sustainability, however,
natural gas systems also represent a health hazard—that is,
like water distribution systems, natural gas systems are con-
stantly under pressure and they inevitably leak, and a study
in Boston found a leakage rate of about 3%.41 The use of nat-
ural gas therefore appears to be “tolerable” (Fig. 1), but it
will have to stop.
Telecommunications
Telecommunications may be the most recent of all infra-
structure services, but it is also the one that has grown most
rapidly since the 2000s. In fact, although telecommunications
first started in the late 18th century with the telegram, then
Figure 4. 2015 Average residential building energy use by the U.S. region. with the telephone in the late 19th century, and then with the
Percentages show the combined energy use of heating and cooling. television in the mid-20th century, it is really the Internet,
created in the 1960s, that fueled the recent growth of telecom-
munications. Using data from the World Bank,42 Figure 5
the European Union as space conditioning accounts for about shows some of this growth that is perhaps best represented by
51% of the total building energy use.38 In terms of SP1, similar mobile services (used both for telephoning and for accessing
to electricity, the demand for space heating and cooling can be the Web). Barely existent in the 1990s, the percentage of the
achieved by better insulating and designing buildings and by population in the world with a mobile subscription rose from
better operating heating and cooling systems. Looking more 15% in 2001 to 102% in 2016—that is, there are more mobile
closely at Fig. 4, buildings in colder climates (i.e., Northeast subscriptions than people on the Earth. Figure 5(a) also shows
and Midwest) consume a significant amount of energy for space the percentage of subscriptions to broadband, and we can see
heating. In contrast, buildings in warmer climates (i.e., South) that it is lot more limited with a 2016 subscription rate of
consume a much less energy for space conditioning, although about 12.5%. Figure 5(b) shows the number of secure Internet
the energy use for space cooling is specifically higher. This is servers per 1 million people. After a dip in 2012, the number
because heating tends to be much more energy intensive than of servers increased again, likely thanks to the rise of “cloud”
cooling. Indeed, cooling is achieved by transferring heat from computing.
one area to another using a heat pump. One unit of energy can be One point needs to be clarified about telecommunications.
used to displace three or four units of heat. In contrast, heating Specifically, we need to distinguish the physical world from the
is often achieved by converting one type of energy to another— virtual world. The physical world includes all the cell towers,
for example by burning gas or by passing a current through a cables, routers, servers, exchange platforms, satellites, and all
resistance as in an electric radiator—and the maximum efficiency other physical equipment needed for telecommunications43
possible is 1. An alternative is to use a heat pump for heating as (i.e., the Internet technically only includes the physical equip-
well, such as an air-source or ground-source heat pump that ment). In contrast, the virtual world includes all the Web sites
uses electricity and that can consume one unit of energy to dis- and information stored in servers and exchanged in cables and
place four or five units of heat. Although they can be costly to wirelessly. The distinction is important because while there is
install—with internal rates of return of around 2%31 at the time little doubt that the virtual world will continue to increase sub-
of writing—they are extremely effective and they will likely stantially, the physical world might not grow as much. Figure 6
become more mainstream in the future. shows a map of the submarine fiber-optic cables around the
A combination of SP1 and SP2 possesses significant poten- world. We can see that the network is already dense; plus, it is
tial here to reduce the demand for energy used toward space worth remembering that for transport, while traffic substan-
heating and cooling. In fact, using off-the-shelf technologies, tially increased after the 1960s, more than half of the roads had
achieving 90% reductions39 in energy use is not difficult already been built by 1950 in the United States.44 The applica-
while being paradigm-shifting. In fact, space conditioning tion of SP1 and SP2 therefore takes a slightly different meaning
offers the infrastructure service that can most easily become for telecommunications.
sustainable. In terms of SP1, the goal is not to limit the number of ser-
Based on these elements, we can ask ourselves whether vices offered—a little like the trip as we will see for transport
it is more “sustainable” to use electricity or natural gas for (next section). Instead, it could be to control the energy used
space heating. Beyond the fact that natural gas is a fossil in telecommunications, which will happen through advances
fuel—thus unsustainable because it is only available in finite in energy efficiency in information and communication
quantities—the answer depends on how electricity is gener- technologies. Energy use is in fact an important limitation
ated. In general, if emissions related to regional electricity for the future growth of the physical telecommunication
generation exceed 191 g CO2e/kW h, using natural gas can infrastructure.45,46

Figure 5. Growth of Internet infrastructure and mobile access.
In terms of SP2, the goal is to install more energy efficiency Transport

equipment as well as to use electricity supply sources that also Compared to the supply and demand of water, electricity,
obey the two sustainability principles. Many Google servers, for natural gas, and information, transport is fundamentally differ-
example, are located in the Dalles (OR) and they are powered ent. In transport, what is “demanded” is generally the means
with hydroelectricity. SP2 can also take a different meaning here to access a location, and what is “supplied” is physical space
as well. In particular, an increasing number of existing infra- and sometimes motion to access this location. Trips made with
structure services rely on telecommunications—for example, private automobiles, private bikes, and walking only require
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems physical space, while trips made with shared-mobility services
used in water, electricity, and natural gas systems rely on tele- (e.g., transit, bike sharing, and ride sharing) require both
communications and so do many traffic signals in transport. physical space and a service that provides motion/movement to
The use of telecommunication systems creates new dependen- reach a destination. Transport is therefore slightly more dif-
cies that, if not well designed, can create vulnerabilities that ficult to define in the context of this study than other infra-
might hinder the sustainability of infrastructure systems. In structure systems—Table 1 lists seven units for transport, and
terms of SP2, the concept of resilience becomes important, the list is not exhaustive—but SP1 and SP2 can be applied in a
although it will not be discussed here (Woods47 offers a great similar fashion. As a side note, as environmental problems
introduction to resilience). related to the use of fossil fuels to power transport are well
Considering the telecommunication system had not matured at known, this section focuses on the sustainability of transport as a
the time of writing, SP2 is more important (partly to help SP1), service, which deals mostly with congestion. Therefore, while
noting that new systems should also be resilient to be sustainable. electric vehicles could partly solve environmental problems
Figure 6. Map of submarine fiber-optic cables.

related to car use, problems related to traffic congestion would For transport, SP1 is key and a suite of strategies that are
remain unsustainable. often grouped within the general realm of travel demand man-
When it comes to transport demand, in transport engineer- agement (TDM) exists. Many of these strategies are not new.
ing, the most important unit is most often the trip—a trip is a In fact, many have been known for a long time. In her seminal
transport activity to go from one location to another location. 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane
The trip is not relevant for sustainability, however, as the goal is Jacobs56 had already pointed to many transport issues, and
not to reduce the number of trips—more trips are in fact gener- she exposed several solutions, which included four conditions
ally desirable for a healthy economy. Instead, the first goal is to for diversity (multiple-use buildings, short blocks, mixtures
reduce the amount of space used. This is why active transport of building ages, and sufficient population density) that have
(i.e., walking and biking), shared-mobility services (i.e., transit, a direct relationship with sustainability.57
bike sharing, and ride sharing), and car-pooling (i.e., multiple
people in a car) are preferable to single car use. In other words, Solid waste
one person in one car uses much more space than one person Akin to transport, what is demanded and supplied in solid
walking, one person on a bike, one person in a train/bus, or waste must be explained. The demand for solid waste is captured
even one person in a car that carries four people. For this rea- by solid waste generation—that is, the amount and composition
son, strategies to reduce space use are generally desirable, from of solid waste that is produced in units of mass, for example, in
implementing policies that favor transit use to controlling park- metric tons. In other words, what is “demanded” is a service to
ing prices to deter auto use, and they fit well within SP1. Moreover, handle the solid waste generated. As a response, the “supply” of
novel technologies can help as well, for example, by providing solid waste are solid waste management strategies that not only
real-time location of transit services.48 The second goal is to reduce include final disposal options (e.g., landfilling), but also include
the distance traveled. For example, a 5-km car trip is preferable to strategies to reduce the amount of solid waste generated (SP1)
a 10-km car trip as half the space is used over time. Policies to and to recycle as much solid waste as possible (SP2). In this sec-
reduce distance traveled often need to include elements of land tion, the focus is on municipal solid waste (MSW) that includes
use,49 for example, by intensifying land use (i.e., single-detached most solid waste from residential, commercial, institutional,
houses versus townhouses and mid-rise and high-rise buildings). industrial, and municipal service sectors. Data were collected
In terms of supply, most cities in high- and upper-middle- from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency58 (EPA), and
income countries already have a sufficient number of roads. MSW does not include construction and demolition debris that
Moreover, one of the biggest lessons from the 1960s and 1970s, often make up 50% of all solid waste generated.
when many cities built urban expressways, was that an increase The history of solid waste is interesting as solid waste man-
in road supply usually leads to an increase in demand, and con- agement is a direct result of urbanization, and it is often the only
gestion often got worse after the opening of a new road.50 infrastructure service that is completely within the purview of
Regardless of how bad traffic is, the supply solution is most local governments.59 Before humans settled permanently and
often not to build new roads, but to offer services, so people use before those settlements grew, the management of solid waste
less space, for example, by building new transit lines (i.e., new was simply not an issue. Moreover, until the 18th century, much
transit service removes traffic from roads, thus lessening traffic) of the solid waste generated consisted of food wastes, sanitary
or at least by implementing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) sewage, and construction debris that could be handled relatively
lanes. This fit well within SP2. Parking is another important easily. The term “relatively” is used cautiously here as many of the
issue as it deals directly with space use, and increasing space epidemics that killed millions of people throughout the world
dedicated to parking can have negative impacts on cities.51,52 came as a result of poor solid waste management practices (often
In fact, parking offers a paradox,53 because more parking may through contaminated groundwater wells). What is meant is
attract more car users, but if too much space is given to parking that the main management practice to handle solid waste in
as opposed to other land uses (e.g., shops), then car users may many cities was to let animals eat it, which was often sufficient.
not have any reason to travel to a location in the first place. Less This changed in the 18th and 19th centuries as cities became
space dedicated to parking or more onerous parking may pro- larger and as more solid waste was generated. For an account on
vide an incentive to use an alternate mode of transport—only if the history of solid waste management, Wilson,60 Louis,61 and
an alternate mode of transport is available, hence the need to Melosi62 are recommended.
invest in transit. As for autonomous vehicles (AVs), they do not For solid waste, priority is put on SP1. In other words, the
belong to SP2. Similar to building new roads, while AVs may goal is to reduce how much solid waste is generated. Figure 7(a)
improve traffic conditions initially,54 demand would inevitably shows the evolution of MSW generation in the United States
catch up and traffic would get worse. In fact, single-use AVs (as from 1960 to 2015; the left y-axis shows monthly per person
opposed to shared) may simply increase the tolerance of people MSW values, and the right y-axis shows total MSW values.
to spend more time in their car, leading to the consumption of We can see that the person and total generation of MSW have
more space, thus resulting in further congestion.55 Strategies increased by a factor of 1.7 and 3, respectively, between 1960
that belong to SP2 further include the construction of sidewalks and 2015. In 2015, the average American generated 61.8 kg
and bike paths and the construction of infrastructure for traffic of solid waste per month, which is often quoted as the average
calming and to increase walking and biking. American throws away their body weight in solid waste every

Figure 7. Historical municipal solid waste generation and disposal in the United States, 1960–2015.
month. Efforts made by the end of the 20th century seemed of methane produced (similar to anaerobic digestion). Figure 7(b)
to have stabilized the amount of waste generated per person, shows that landfilling has been the dominant strategy used in the
but the total amount of waste generated has continued to United States since the 1960s. By 2015, about 50% of the solid
increase. The case of the United States is not unique. In fact, waste generated ended up in a landfill, followed by about 35% that
it is shared by most high-income countries—the report World was recycled or composted, and finally 15% that was combusted
Bank What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Man- with energy recovery.
agement63 contains the data for most countries of the world. For solid waste, the application of SP1 is a priority,
In solid waste management, the reduction in solid waste has although strategies to apply it are less obvious. In particular,
been recognized as the highest priority at least since the 1970s, effort can be put into encouraging people to reuse their prod-
and it features at the top of the U.S. EPA waste management ucts instead of discarding them, and manufacturers can be
hierarchy that includes the following: (i) source reduction encouraged to use less material and packaging. Because of the
and reuse, (ii) recycling and composting, (iii) energy recovery, difficulty in applying SP1, the application of SP2 is impor-
and (iv) treatment and disposal. Moreover, reduce is also the tant as well, especially to promote recycling and composting,
first of the famous three R’s of solid waste management: which often involves separating solid waste at the source
reduce, reuse, and recycle—a fourth R exists, and it stands for (e.g., with different trash cans).
recover. Most effort should therefore be put into applying
SP1, but SP2 can also be applied. Buildings
Once solid waste has been generated, there are several ways to Although buildings are naturally part of the infrastructure
apply SP2. First, once a product is discarded, it should be reused if system, the building stock is not typically thought of as an urban
possible, either to its original function (e.g., from selling/donating infrastructure system, and yet people spend nearly 90% of their
a piece of electronics to reusing a shopping bag) or to a different times inside buildings.66 Residential and commercial buildings
function (e.g., metal container reused for storage). If a product also consume about 40% of the total energy used in the United
cannot be reused, it can then be recycled with as little transforma- States.67 Most of that energy is consumed in the form of electric-
tion as possible. Many materials can be recycled such as paper and ity and natural gas, however, which have their own section in this
cardboard, steel and aluminum cans, and plastics. Glass can also be study. For this reason, in the context of this article, the focus
crushed into sand, and wood can be chipped. Food wastes can also is on two elements of buildings not captured by other infrastruc-
be “recycled,” either in the form of aerobic composting (to be used ture systems: space (expressed as an area in m2) and materials
as fertilizer) or in the form of anaerobic digesting (generating (often expressed as a weight in kg).
methane that can be used to produce electricity/heat). Material The demand for buildings can vary dramatically by country.
can also be recovered, for example, by recovering construction Table 2 shows the average size of a new home (2009 data) for
materials and metals present in buildings before they are demol- 15 countries in the world.68 Australia, the United States, and
ished. Material recovery from the building stock is part of the Canada use the most space with new home sizes of about 200 m2.
emerging field of urban mining.64,65 After these initial options, Denmark, Greece, France, and Germany come next with home
organic waste can be burned and the energy produced can be used sizes varying roughly from 110 m2 to 140 m2, and they are fol-
to generate electricity and/or heat. Finally, the solid waste can be lowed by Japan (95 m2). Other European countries come next
landfilled, preferably in sanitary landfill that both prevent the con- with Spain, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom having
tamination of the land around the landfill and enable the collection average new home sizes between 75 and 100 m2. Finally, China,

Table 2. New home size by country in square meters (m2) (data source: electricity and natural gas, in some contexts, effort should
Wilson). also be put into reducing the amount of space consumed by
buildings.
In terms of supply, buildings are difficult to analyze. New
Country New home size (m2) buildings are needed across the world, whether they are built on
empty lots or whether they replace existing buildings (from
Australia 214
which materials can be recovered—see section Solid waste). This
is especially the case as the world’s population is expected to
Canada 181
increase to 11 or 12 billion by 2100. Whether the supply of a
new building is sustainable or not partly depends on local con-
Chinaa 60
texts. Moreover, new buildings should be adequately sized.
Nonetheless, in an era of bioinspired and metamaterials,71 new
Denmark 137
materials and a better use of current materials have the poten-
France 112 tial to completely change how buildings are designed and how
much energy they consume in the first place.72
Germany 109 The application of SP1 and SP2 to buildings is therefore a
little more difficult. By focusing purely on space and materials,
Greece 126 we see that both SP1 and SP2 can be applied, although their
applications should be coordinated with all other infrastruc-
Hong Kong 45 ture systems.
This concludes our application of the two sustainable princi-
Italy 81 ples to the seven urban infrastructure systems studied in this
article. Table 3 summarizes some of the strategies given for SP1
Japan 95 and SP2. Next, an approach to sustainable urban infrastructure
design is discussed.
Russia 57
An approach to urban infrastructure design
Spain 97
As cities will change and adapt to address their challenges,
one quote comes to mind from John Reader’s book Cities:
Sweden 83
“Cities are transitory markers in the progress of civilization,
not permanent fixtures.” (p. 304)20 As the previous section
United Kingdom 76
highlighted, much progress is yet to happen to design, build,
and operate sustainable cities. Moreover, we need to realize
United States 201
that the infrastructure systems that we discussed do not work in
a Urban only. isolation. In fact, not only do they coexist, they are often inter-
dependent, and therefore, changes in one infrastructure system
almost systematically affect all other systems. These interde-
Russia, and Hong Kong come last with home sizes of 60, 57, pendencies were ill understood at the time of writing,71,72
and 45 m2, respectively. New homes in Australia are therefore but better controlling them will become essential in the future.
4.75 times larger than those in Hong Kong. Every building In particular, effort should be put into designing interdepend-
also requires construction materials. In particular, concrete is encies with specific properties that enhance sustainability
the material that is most consumed in the world, before oil and resilience.
and coal. In 2012, about 30 billion tons of concrete were con- To illustrate this last point, Fig. 8 shows a house in the
sumed,69 and noting that concrete has a carbon intensity of Japanese island of Okinawa. As a building, the house uses
about 0.1 kg CO2 per kg of concrete,70 30 billion tons of con- solar energy for water heating (i.e., steel drum on the roof) and
crete represent 3 billion tons of CO2 (in 2012 alone). Consid- to produce electricity (i.e., solar panel on the roof), thus poten-
ering differences in average home size per country, we can tially requiring less electricity from the power grid. Moreover,
conclude that applying SP1 in some contexts could help con- we can hypothesize that the building is relatively well insulated
trol the demand for space and material for buildings. This is and that it requires less energy for space heating—that is, the
especially the case in the sprawling suburbs of Australia, the average temperature in the coldest month (January) is 16.5 C
United States, and Canada. Moreover, we need to account for (62 F)—that can be provided by an air-source heat pump
the fact that larger homes can also lead to higher consumption (again using electricity partly produced on site with solar
of electricity, natural gas, water, and transport (i.e., increases in energy). We can also hypothesize that the building is made of
driving distances). Therefore, while better building designs and recovered material and that household members use public
insulation are needed to help decrease the consumption of transit and that the one vehicle in the picture is shared among

Table 3. Summary of strategies for SP1 and SP2.
Infrastructure systems SP1: controlling the demand SP2: increasing the supply within reason
Water • Low-flow, low-use, and low-flush • Water microgrid
appliances to reduce water consumption • Low-impact development
Electricity • More efficient appliances • Renewable energy

• Nuclear energy
District heating and • Better designs • Adoption of designs and technologies to reduce
cooling and natural gas • Building insulation energy use such as an air-source and ground-source
heat pump for heating
Telecommunications … • More efficient telecommunication systems and devices
Transport • Travel demand management • Transit systems

• Land use intensification • Pathways (walking and biking)
• Shared-mobility services
Solid waste • Reduce • Recycling

• Reuse • Recover
• Encourage manufacturers to use less material • Composting
Buildings • Promote smaller home sizes • Build smaller home sizes

• Use environmentally friendly materials
household members (and that eventually it could be electric). also be fitted with low-flow, low-use, and low-flush appliances,
Furthermore, we can also hypothesize that drinking water is and it could even be fitted with a secondary water treatment
provided by a nearby source and a reservoir storing enough process at the house to ensure the water is clean even if the
water for a day or two is located on top of the hill in the back- water pipes delivering water are not constantly under pres-
ground so that the system uses gravity—that is, thus still sup- sure. Furthermore, occupants may generate little solid waste,
plying water in the event of a power outage. The house may and even then, they may have several trash cans to sort solid
waste based on whether it is recyclable (e.g., aluminum cans),
compostable (e.g., food wastes), or not. The solid waste that
cannot be recycled or recovered could then be brought to a
local waste-to-energy (WTE) processing plant so that it is
burned, and the electricity produced can be supplied in the
transmission lines located above the house. A number of other
hypotheses can also be made, but we can see that SP1 strate-
gies can be applied to reduce demand significantly and that the
house and the neighborhood can be fitted with various features
according to SP2 that would also help SP1.
Following the discussion in this article, a four-step urban
infrastructure design (UID) process is proposed and it can be
followed before designing any new piece of infrastructure.
These four steps should be applied sequentially:
1. Controlling the demand to reduce the need for new

infrastructure,
2. Integrating a needed service within the current
infrastructure,
Figure 8. House in Okinawa (Japan). 3. Making new infrastructure multifunctional to provide
for other infrastructure systems,

4. Designing for specific interdependencies and decentral- In the end, this four-step urban infrastructure design process
izing infrastructure if possible. is fairly intuitive. The main barriers to applying them are mostly
institutional—from an administrative viewpoint, that is, who
Urban Infrastructure Design step 1 (UID1) essentially fol- is responsible for a project that involves multiple service
lows SP1. Instead of building new infrastructure, it might be providers?—and cultural—as in the culture of an organization.
possible to reduce the demand for the infrastructure in the first Indeed, the problem is not inherently technological, although
place using proper incentives, for example, by adopting travel the future technologies will likely contribute to UID4 (e.g., for
demand management strategies in transport, by recommending water microgrids and efficient electricity storage). Overall,
low-flow, low-use, and low-flush appliances to reduce water by following the two sustainability principles, the successful
consumption, by better insulating a building to reduce space- implementation of this four-step UID process has the poten-
conditioning loads, and by reusing solid waste as much as possible. tial to significantly help cities become more sustainable.
This is particularly important as some infrastructure systems are
oversized, which may end up costing more energy and money in
the long run—for example, oversized chillers in buildings can Conclusion
lead to overcooling that is uncomfortable while consuming While cities have evolved tremendously over the ages, the
more energy. reason why human beings decide to form settlements and live
UID2 suggests the integration of any new service within an together has not changed, or at least it has not changed since
already existing infrastructure system. The rationale is essen- Aristotle wrote “The city-state comes into being for the sake of
tially to leverage existing infrastructure systems. One example living, but it exists for the sake of living well” as cited at the
is to install green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens and small beginning of this article. To be able to provide a livable environ-
retention/detention basins) in streets across a city as is done in ment, cities have had to evolve over time, partly to address
Philadelphia, as opposed to building large underground reser- the challenges they had to face, and this process is unlikely to
voirs such as DigIndy in Indianapolis and TARP in Chicago that change in the foreseeable future. In this article, the main argu-
tend to cost billions of dollars and that are not necessarily effec- ment is that cities face two major challenges that are likely to
tive.11 Moreover, UID2 is commonly followed in telecommu- transform urban infrastructure systems. First, cities will need to
nications as fiber-optic cables often follow railway tracks; in consume much less energy and much fewer resources, and sec-
Chicago, the municipal government also placed fiber-optic cables ond, cities will need to become much more resilient. These two
in sewer pipes to provide Web access to certain areas.73 challenges are significant, but they also offer an opportunity to
UID3 follows the premise that if new infrastructure needs to rethink how cities are planned, designed, built, and operated.
be built, it can be used to provide more than one service—this By adopting a focus on sustainability, the main goal of this arti-
is similar to the colloquial saying “killing two birds with one cle was to introduce two sustainability principles and a four-step
stone.” For example, when a road needs to be resurfaced or urban infrastructure design process.
upgraded, it can be fitted with green infrastructure at the same To achieve this goal, the general concept of sustainable devel-
time. When a building needs to be retrofitted or built, it can be opment applied to cities was defined and discussed, revealing three
equipped with an air-source or ground-source heat pump and/ types of scenarios: sustainable, tolerable, and unsustainable.
or with a solar water heater and solar panels. This inherently Realizing that this definition could not lead to practical meas-
requires better coordination between the providers of the vari- ures, the discussion led to the development of two sustainability
ous infrastructure services, which is not necessarily trivial, but principles: (SP1) controlling the demand and (SP2) increasing
which presents substantial benefits—and which seems to be the supply within reason. At the core of this article, the two sus-
gaining traction as municipal departments increasingly work tainability principles were applied to seven urban infrastruc-
together in many parts of the world (especially when it comes to ture systems: water, electricity, district heating and cooling and
installing low-impact development). natural gas, telecommunications, transport, solid waste, and
Finally, UID4 focuses specifically on interdependencies buildings. With this exercise, we learned that some infrastruc-
so that a piece of infrastructure can be more resilient if another ture systems should primarily focus on SP1 (district heating and
system is affected. Conceptually, UID4 is relatively more diffi- cooling and natural gas, transport, solid waste, and buildings),
cult to understand, and many strategies remain to be created while others should focus on SP2 (electricity and telecommuni-
or discovered, but an illustrative example is to equip electric cations), and finally that the urban water realm should focus on
equipment such as streetlights, traffic signals, and water pres- both (i.e., SP1 for water consumption and SP2 for low-impact
sure gauges with their own sources of power and power storage development). Quite naturally, this analysis led to the develop-
(e.g., solar panels or wind turbines, and a battery), so they are ment of a four-step urban infrastructure design process that
less “dependent” on the power grid. In a similar fashion, build- can help design more sustainable and resilient urban infra-
ing attics might be fitted with water tanks in case of failure of a structure systems: (UID1) controlling the demand to reduce
water distribution system and possibly of the power grid (that is the need for new infrastructure, (UID2) integrating a needed
why the reservoir should be elevated to leverage gravity for service within the current infrastructure, (UID3) making new
water supply)—that is, in Japan, most people do not drain their infrastructure multifunctional to provide for other infrastructure
bathtubs at night in the event an earthquake occurs.74 systems, and (UID4) designing for specific interdependencies and

decentralizing infrastructure if possible. While many barriers City in Europe and America, Tarr J.A. and Dupuy G., eds. (Temple University
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Foundation (NSF) CAREER award #155173 and by the NSF LID-BMP-GI practices: Strategies and optimization tools. Sci. Total Environ.
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MRS Energy & Sustainability: A Review Journal

Keywords: sustainability; infrastructure; energy generation; transportation; water

settled together in cities because as a society we tend to live

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Figure 1. Production and consumption in sustainability.

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Table 1. Urban infrastructure production and consumption.

Infrastructure Production/supply Consumption/demand Units

Electricity • Electricity • Space conditioning • Power (W)

District heating • Natural gas • Hot air • Energy (J or W h)

Telecommunications • Information (virtual world) • Information (virtual world) • Information (bit)

Buildings • Physical space • Physical space • Area (m2)

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In terms of SP2, the goal is to install more energy efficiency Transport

Figure 6. Map of submarine fiber-optic cables.

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Electricity • More efficient appliances • Renewable energy

Telecommunications … • More efficient telecommunication systems and devices

Transport • Travel demand management • Transit systems

Solid waste • Reduce • Recycling

Buildings • Promote smaller home sizes • Build smaller home sizes

1. Controlling the demand to reduce the need for new

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1. Controlling the demand to reduce the need for new