SRN: Integrated Urban Infrastructure Solutions for Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy, and Livable Cities

We are a network of scientists, industry leaders, and policy partners, committed to building better cities of the future through innovations in infrastructure design, technology and policy. Developed with support from the US National Science Foundation’s Sustainability Research Network (SRN) program, our network connects across nine research universities, major metropolitan cities in the U.S. and India, as well as infrastructure firms, and policy groups. Our work focuses on ways to reimagine infrastructure—energy grids, transportation networks, green spaces, and food and water systems—to create cities that are highly functional, promote the health of residents and the environment, and have that intangible feeling called livability, that makes cities desirable places to live and work. Our project explores a new movement gaining momentum in cities around the world toward “distributed,” or more local, infrastructure such as urban farms, district energy systems, bicycle paths, car-sharing systems, and more. We seek to identify the best mix of local and large infrastructure systems to achieve urban sustainability, health and livability goals, by examining possibilities in diverse cities across the U.S. and in India. We explore physical changes in infrastructure design, the role of new technologies, as well as the changes in public attitudes and policies that can help achieve the infrastructure transitions needed to build desirable cities, today and into the future.

Mission

Our Mission is to advance environmental sustainability, health, and livability in diverse cities across the world through infrastructure innovations in energy, water, transportation, green infrastructure, and food systems, linked with social, behavioral, and policy change.