Blue-Green Cities and Resilient Infrastructure

What are blue-green cities?

Cities concentrate people and business. Cities rely on water, goods and other services provided by infrastructure networks. These networks are within, and extend far beyond, city limits.

Blue-green cities recreate the natural water cycle. They bring water management and green infrastructure together. They combine and protect the values of the urban landscape. They provide resilient and adaptive measures to deal with flood events.

Blue-green cities generate a multitude of environmental, ecological, socio-cultural and economic benefits.

A butterfly standing on the concrete ground.

The changing face of our cities

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme and disruptive events. Population growth is increasing the demand for water and its associated energy use.

Urbanisation can have negative effects, such as:

modifying natural landscapes
increasing pollution
raising local air temperature
altering hydrological processes

Making our cities fit for everyone

Cities and infrastructure must be liveable and economically productive places. They must also:

be resilient to climate extremes
emit minimal quantities of greenhouse gases
make sustainable use of resources.

Balancing and realising these aims is a major research focus.

We are challenging the status quo. Working with planners, policy-makers, utility owners and communities, we envision blue-green cities. These cities will work with water. They will provide innovative, cost effective ways of delivering infrastructure services.

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