Micro-Infrastructure Innovation

independent collecting water

This research investigates the cutting edge urban infrastructural approaches evolving around micro-scale solutions to water, energy, and waste. The resolution of the challenges associated with urban population expansion globally in the coming decades pivot heavily on the resilience and sustainability of the infrastructural systems available to support these changes. Critical advancements and innovations in technology, engineered ecology, finance, equity, leadership, and governance are required to preempt the social and environmental vulnerability associated with the anticipated demographic transformations in the coming decades. The cross-pollination of innovations derived out of necessity in the Global South, when coupled with technological advances in the Global North, presents an opportunity for acceleration of positive benefits in the urban infrastructural and design context.

These research topics are closely informed by two principal documents: 1) The Urban Design Lab / Millennium Cities report, “Spatial Strategies for Manyatta. Designing for Growth”; and 2) A white paper in preparation on “Innovations in Urban Infrastructure. Accelerating Equitable Deployment of Resilient Systems”. Detail micro-design exponents of both documents point toward new bottom up micro-infrastructural approaches that are the beginning of the exploration.

Critics: Richard Plunz (Director), Susan Blaustein, Priscila Coli