City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

City-Level Decoupling: Urban resource flows and the governance of infrastructure transitions

Figure 2.4 Two different models of energy flows through Jinze Town, Shanghai 2 1

Source: World Bank 2010

electricity generation facility powered by natural gas.

applies to the demand technologies: resource- efficient systems could reduce water demand by up to 80%. The same logic applies to neighbourhood and city-wide systems. Figure 2.4 shows two different ways of configuring the energy system of Jinze Town, Shanghai. The figure on the left represents the current system, and the figure on the right shows what a more sustainable resource flow could look like if the urban infrastructure were reconfigured to decouple the use of coal-based electricity supplied via the national grid from economic growth and improvements in wellbeing. In the more sustainable system, emissions and financial costs are reduced, more local jobs are created and energy security is enhanced. The key technology innovation is a local

These Sankey diagrams are a useful simple demonstration of the principle that infrastructures can be reconfigured to create more sustainable metabolic flows. Linking material flows and infrastructure analysis demonstrates the economic benefits of infrastructure alternatives that conduct the flows of resources through urban systems in a more sustainable way. In other words, as resource depletion drives prices higher, it will become economically counterproductive to ignore the need for alternative socio-technical systems that both to do more with less and actively restore degraded ecosystems and reduce GHG emissions.

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