Urban Systems As Place-Based Foci For Infrastructure Interactions - Climate Change and Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerabilities - page 41

Chapter 4
Urban Systems As Place-Based Foci
For Infrastructure Interactions
A. Why The Urban Systems Lens
In considering the implications of climate change for interactions among various kinds
of built infrastructure and environments, urban areas are often of special interest, for
at least four reasons (SAP 4.6). First, urban areas are nodes where all of the kinds of
infrastructures come together in a particular place and are integrated in support of the
functions of the urban system; as we know from recent experience with major weather
events in the US, this close dynamic interconnection increases potentials for cascading
impacts from disruptions. Second, urban areas are where the demands for infrastruc-
ture services are concentrated: where infrastructure disruptions have the greatest im-
pacts on comfort, convenience, mobility, and labor productivity for the largest number
of people. Third, for reasons having to do with why they developed in those locations,
many US urban areas are in areas especially vulnerable to impacts from climate-related
extreme weather events, such as coastal areas or river valleys subject to flooding and se-
vere storms. Fourth, urban areas are important more broadly for decision-making about
climate change responses; they are where the votes are, the financial centers are, the
media centers are, and often vicinities where both university and industrial centers of
innovation are located. Urban areas mater profoundly in assessing cross-sectoral inter-
actions among infrastructures (see the NCA Technical Input Report on U.S. Cities and
Climate Change).
In addition, working at the scale of urban areas brings many of the more generic as-
sessment issues for infrastructures into focus. For example, cities across the US represent
a wide diversity of climate-related threats and circumstances and a wide diversity of dis-
tributed/decentralized initiatives in responding to stresses and threats to their economic
and social sustainability (see Section II). Consider, for example, New York vs. Miami vs.
Chicago vs. Denver vs. Seatle vs. Los Angeles: enormously diferent contexts, mixes of
activities, types and ages of infrastructures, and histories of climate and weather-related
disruptions. This diversity complicates any effort to identify generic issues and appro-
priate responses, but at the same time it offers a wide range of opportunities for learning
from experience and for encouraging and beneiting from botom-up innovations.
B. Overviewing Urban Infrastructure Sectors And Services
Climate change will significantly impact the operation of urban systems defined within
specific sectors and services. In most cases the impacts will be negative, but there also