Speaker
Description
Urban infrastructures are essential for the provision of necessary services, including utilities such as water, electrical power, social services, and recreational green spaces, all of which contribute to the operation of cities. Cities are continuous spaces of flows, flux and translocation, and function as strategic nexuses within the continuous and dynamic process of infrastructurally facilitated flow, movement, and exchange (Graham and Marvin 2001; Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). Therefore, there is a continuous change in planning and operating infrastructures from a modernist approach to an infrastructural turn. Recently, critical infrastructure (CI) and green infrastructure take place in literature due to natural and human-made disasters. Especially pandemic and climate change-induced disasters have increased the visibility of critical infrastructures and green infrastructures.
CI is defined as the systems, facilities, and networks that are vital to the functioning and well-being of a population and have been the focus of significant attention. The term has not a common definition. However, the primary idea is that when one or more critical infrastructures are disrupted, they have negative impacts on society (Setola, Luiijf, and Theocharidou 2016). Despite its clear importance, the understanding of CI remains fragmented across academic and policy domains. The purpose of this study is to address the identified gap by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding critical infrastructure.
The study adopts a threefold approach. First of all, the positioning of critical infrastructure and green infrastructure in urban infrastructure studies will be presented. A study on the conceptualization of critical infrastructure will be carried out. The criticality of infrastructure is assessed using a variety of approaches. The aim of this study to present a comprehensive approach to criticality of infrastructures. Second, using this conceptualization, the study re-evaluates green infrastructure through lens of critical infrastructure. Green infrastructure is examined to understand its role in meeting societal needs and its alignment with the characteristics of critical infrastructure. Third, a comprehensive review of green infrastructure policies and strategies in İzmir will be conducted to understand place of green infrastructure as a CI in İzmir. A qualitative content analysis is conducted.
The study aims to contribute academic discourse by discussing and presenting a comprehensive approach to criticality of an infrastructure and evaluate green infrastructure as critical infrastructure. Moreover, it will contribute to the understanding of the criticality of green infrastructure in cities particularly with regard to the protection and management of critical and green infrastructures, especially in the face of emerging threats such as climate change and pandemics.
References
Graham, Steve, and Simon Marvin. 2001. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. Routledge.
Kaika, Maria, and Erik Swyngedouw. 2000. “Fetishizing the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban Technological Networks.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 (1): 120–38.
Setola, Roberto, Eric Luiijf, and Marianthi Theocharidou. 2016. Critical Infrastructures, Protection and Resilience. Edited by Roberto Setola, Vittorio Rosato, Elias Kyriakides, and Erich Rome. Vol. 90. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control. Springer International Publishing.
| Keywords | Critical Infrastructure; Green Infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
