Future Cities Distributed Infrastructure project

Cities play a key role in relation to low-carbon resilient futures. Although they occupy less than 2% of the earth’s land mass, cities now house over half of global population and contribute around 70-80% of greenhouse gas pollution. They are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of changing weather patterns and extreme weather events. However, cities are also fundamental generators of innovation, crucial to our national productivity and liveability, accounting for around 80% of national economic activity in Australia. As a result, they have emerged as critically important players in global action to address climate change.

The Future Cities Node of Excellence is based in the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab. One of its core projects is the Future Cities Distributed Infrastructure Project, which brings together six CRC Low Carbon Living funded higher degree by research students and University funded senior and Early Career research experts in an innovative and integrated research program to envisage, design, plan and model post-carbon resilient futures and ‘adaptive-mitigation’ pathways for four selected local councils within Metropolitan Melbourne.

It is a collaborative research program with the objective to identify opportunities across Melbourne where critical infrastructure services like energy, food, water and waste can be delivered in a way that is more distributed, local and networked. It will explore what would be required to make these changes happen and the impacts on the surrounding communities and urban structure. By testing multiple sites and different ways to re-configure localised infrastructure systems using quantitative modelling, the project will help to identify the degree to which such systems of service provision can cut cities’ carbon emissions and build resilience to extreme weather.