Reader’s Response to article “Developing
Sustainable Infrastructure in New Cities” Draft 3
In the article
“Developing Sustainable Infrastructure in New Cities”, Cho (2014) states that
developing cities cannot sustain steady growth by ignoring economic, social, and
environmental challenges and the impact of rapid urban expansion. The writer
first introduces the Envision Sustainability Rating System, a tool from Harvard
University used to measure the sustainability of newly built infrastructure.
She then mentions the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) that is being built in
Saudi Arabia with the Envision Certification firm at its roots, citing positive
impacts on local communities. According to Cho, infrastructure sustainability
has a huge role to play in the swift expansion of developing cities. While I
agree with her and think that countries must look thoroughly into their city
planning before they start construction, she did not mention critical points
like how Envision is useful for developing countries and other alternative
rating systems.
The first thing
to know about Envision is how available it is to everyone, given that a lot of essential
material is found free online. Envision's rating system is the current
reference for best practices in building sustainable infrastructure (Nelson,
2015). Developing countries that may not have a lot of experience creating
sustainable cities can definitely benefit from all the information Envision
provides. They deliver all the lessons learnt in building sustainable cities
over the years by developed countries in the form of simple and easy to use
checklists. The fact that I can get hold of those invaluable checklists just by
giving them my email shows that Envision really wants their ideas to be shared.
Summing up, Envision makes themselves extremely useful to interested parties in
developing countries by being easily obtainable, which translates to small
companies being able to create sustainable infrastructure without additional
costs, something Cho did not mention.
One other point
that Cho did not bring up is the existence of alternate rating systems in the
industry. Envision, being a comprehensive guide for creating sustainable
infrastructure, will be useful for projects with multiple factors. But there
are different rating systems that focus on projects that are much less complex
and much smaller in scale (Vargas, 2013). In a small project where manpower is
limited, a self-assessed system employed by Envision can require extra time
commitment from a team that could already be working very hard. This is where
systems like Greenroads come in (Ninmann, 2012). Although it only certifies
roadway projects, it is purely third party reviewed which means the project
team can focus on the project and not on the certification process. Project
teams in developing countries with small projects, low budget or limited
manpower can find rating systems like Greenroads extremely useful.
In conclusion,
the article by Cho discusses about how building sustainable cities in
developing countries is important and how Envision aids this cause. However,
she did not comment on how developing countries have easy access to Envision
and the presence of other rating systems that could be better suited to small
projects.
(493 words)
References
Cho, H. (2014). Developing sustainable infrastructure in
new cities. New Cities Foundation. Retrieved
September 30, 2015, from http://www.newcitiesfoundation.org/evaluating-
Nelson, D. (2015). Advancing
sustainable infrastructure with Envision. Civil and Structural Engineer.
Retrieved September 30, 2015, from http://cenews.com/article/10098/
Vargas, S. (2013). Sustainability
rating systems: broad based or narrowly focused? Civil and Structural
Engineer. Retrieved September 30, 2015, from http://cenews.com/article/
Ninman,
T. (2012). Greenroads rating system is on a roll. For Construction
