CURF
The Canberra Urban and Regional Futures (CURF) Living Infrastructure Project focused on generating knowledge to support innovative strategies for high-quality living infrastructure within Canberra’s urban renewal and development processes. This paper summarises the project’s findings including that:
Living infrastructure initiatives help remake cities, transforming their form and function;
Strong synergies arise from integrating urban planning with de-carbonising and innovation strategies;
Integrated planning can harness synergies achieving multiple social, economic and environmental benefits but institutional and political commitment and active community participation are critical to sucess;
An emerging ‘eco’ or biophilic cities movement is emerging with many cities are actively aiming to enhance biodiversity conservation;
Numerous studies indicate the high value of ecosystem services in urban areas;
‘Novel urban natures’ are forming. Cities are evolving assemblages of intertwined cultural, material and ecological elements generating novel ecosystems in multiple ways. Firstly all ‘urban nature’ exists within materially and socially complex urban environments that are inherently politicized. Secondly, new biotic and non-biotic combinations are forming novel ecosystems. Thirdly, in the Anthropocene historic definitions of the ‘human’ or ‘natural’ are breaking down. Given these factors, the use of idealised ‘pre-development’ benchmarks for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration are increasingly problematic. Rethinking ways to set conservation or ‘restoration’ objectives is needed;
Planning of cities needs to recognise the novel co-produced nature of ecosystems and focus on setting forward-looking planning objectives, rather than deriving goals based on some idealised past ‘natural’ state.
Download the “Planning and Implementing Living Infrastructure in the Australian Capital Territory” Final Report - PDF [ 4.7 MB ]
