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Creating Low Carbon Cities pp 99–111Cite as

Low-Carbon Urban Infrastructure

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Abstract

As cities consider how to provide essential urban services in the post-fossil fuel age, they find that incremental strategies are not enough. The challenge, and opportunity, is to reinvent essential city infrastructure—for water, food, shelter, energy, transport, culture, and economy—in a climate-friendly way. By reclaiming human-scale neighborhoods, relearning and further developing sustainable and passive building techniques, and reaching forward with technology in the service of society, cities can thrive with less energy and fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This chapter examines essential concepts and examples of low-carbon urban infrastructure, highlighting urban form designed in harmony with the city’s geography; resilience to climate change impacts as well as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; and prioritization of demand-side management in city systems, through improved design, efficiency, and de-carbonization.

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Acknowledgements

Some of the research for this chapter was supported by the China Sustainable Energy Program of the Energy Foundation through the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Thanks to the University of San Francisco Faculty Development Fund and student Sarah Lund for research assistance.

Disclosure

This work was supported by the China Sustainable Energy Program of the Energy Foundation through the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Stephanie B. Ohshita & Nan Zhou

Authors
  1. Stephanie B. Ohshita
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  2. Nan Zhou
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Correspondence to Stephanie B. Ohshita .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, Resources and Development, and Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand

    Shobhakar Dhakal

  2. School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Matthias Ruth

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Ohshita, S.B., Zhou, N. (2017). Low-Carbon Urban Infrastructure. In: Dhakal, S., Ruth, M. (eds) Creating Low Carbon Cities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49730-3_10

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