Urban morphology and infrastructure: Implications for a sustainable future

Urban infrastructure plays a vital role in supporting public health, public safety, economic sustainability, and in determining the ecological and environmental impacts of every urban centre. As is so often the case, early planning decisions, frequently made long before any detailed engineering design is even considered, play a key role in determining the size and extent of the costs, impacts, overall sustainability, as well as the specific performance of these engineered systems. This paper provides a preliminary review and reflection on the vital issue of urban morphology and its potential impact on the energy and material flows that constitute modern urban centers. Specific connection is made between urban infrastructure and issues of housing and urban density, and these results in turn have implications for specific decisions influencing all civil engineering infrastructure systems ranging from roads and transit systems, to the reliability of water supply and the generation of urban runoff.