Rethinking Infrastructure Design - Rethinking Infrastructure Design for Multi-Use Water Services - page 22

Attaching a monetary value to ecosystem services can be enormously useful to
making a strong case for adopting MUS measures/solutions (see also discussion in
Sect. 2 ). For example, in Cape Town, South Africa, it was calculated that for every
unit of currency (ZAR) that municipality spends on the environment, at least 8.3
ZAR of ecosystem goods and services is generated. A similar study on street and
park streets was conducted in five US cities. The 2011 assessment of Mayesbrook

Park rehabilitation project, East London, showed how MUS solutions could help
urban areas to cope with the elevated risk of damage due to climate change, for
example increased

flooding and higher summer temperatures, while also providing
socio-economic gains. The investment of £ 3.81 million into GI will yield a lifetime

bene t-to-cost ratio of approximately 7:1. A study in Toronto showed that by

implementing green roofs, urban temperature could be reduced up to 2 ° C, resulting

in energy savings of $12 million.

5 Conclusions

This volume introduces the methods by which mutual interactions of urban water
infrastructure (blue assets) and urban vegetated areas (green assets) are taken into
account in the synergy of spatial planning and optimised modelling of ecosystems '
performance indicators. This method of planning should make future developments
cheaper to build, their users will pay lower utility bills (for water, energy, heating),
such developments will be more pleasant to live in and property value would likely
be higher. This volume presents the basics of a vision and an understanding of
available measures and options for planning of new and retro

tting / redesign of the
existing cities based on the MUS concept. No society is going to be rich enough to
miss the opportunity to provide integrated multifunctional ' wise men ' sMUS

solutions presented in this section. To arrive at this vision, we need to keep all

stakeholders involved and engaged, since the ambitions and plans are all too often
removed from the people living in the area affected. Although the bene

'

ts from
green and blue infrastructure are fairly well understood, the synergies from their
integration are less understood and (much) less applied. Now is a good time to
rethink all those bene ts and incorporate them into consistent innovative urban

planning.
The MUS paradigm has, in this section, been demonstrated to be a highly
effective means of mitigating the numerous problems that can arise in towns and
cities through adoption of the existing urban planning paradigm. The essential
concept is the integration of vegetation into the urban framework to provide mul-
tiple bene ts without compromising quality of life or the protection of the natural

environment. However, to implement MUS solutions successfully, a clear vision
and well-de

ned measures for the desired outcomes are necessary. It is essential,