At the San Francisco Department of the Environment, IEE Executive Director Ed Church was asked to present ways to frame planning for 50 to 100 years, the useful life of urban infrastructure currently on the drawing boards. This March, the title of the presentation was “Urban Functions: Some Research and Some Provocation.” Ed remarked that it requires stretching our imaginations a bit to think of a world 50 years from now where most of what we do and how we do it will change. But the alternative, that conventional infrastructure will still be useful in that world, is less plausible. The Institute’s Resilient Infrastructure project offers research and tools to assist planning and investment.
