City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

Figure 6.2 Four types of rebundled green urban networks 124

New build/ new construction

New urban developments as “integrated eco- urbanism”

Constructing new “urban networked technologies”

Integrated/ systemic

Network based

Reconfiguring cities as “Systemic urban transition”

Retrofitting existing “Urban networked infrastructures”

Existing cities/ retrofitting

Source: Hodson & Marvin 2010

two dimensions – retrofit or new construction, network or system – create a matrix with four models which can be summarized as follows: • 'Integrated eco-urbanism' refers to new (large or small) development (e.g. an eco- island, new town, or cluster development, or eco-village) that takes place normally on a (semi-) greenfields site. The design includes a wide range of different network infrastructures (water, energy, waste, and sanitation) that have been integrated to achieve high-level sustainability goals. Examples of intentional integration span capital intensive elite enclaves like Masdar, Abu Dhabi on one extreme to bottom-up socially more complex grassroots eco- villages on the other, and both can be found in all regions. • 'Urban networked technologies' are also about new construction on a (semi-)

technical changes primarily steered and led by infrastructure service providers and developers. The integrative and systemic responses to integrated/systemic developments at the scale of new developments are designed to achieve a more autonomous and self-reliant set of approaches to resource management. Reconfiguring the built fabric and infrastructures by mobilising stakeholders and social interests around wider visions of systemic socio-technical change implies a much more ambitious, challenging and complex process of managed socio-technical and behavioural change, with much more blurry boundaries between different resource flows and social interests that cross multiple scales. Systemic change within a highly distributed infrastructure system is much more difficult to achieve, whether this involves the installation of new networks in congested cities or the reconfiguration of existing systems. These

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