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An Understanding of Green Infrastructure
In Urban Design Context
By Leonardus K.H. Manggol
Introduction
In the new global urban development, Green Infrastructure has become a central discussion for the
strategy of sustainability urban design (Gehl, 2008). This concept creates opportunities to maintain
the productivity of the cities while adapting to the vulnerability of the natural environment. The
vulnerability, mainly, is a result of urban growth and the climate change effects. The inadequate urban
design strategies to deal with the effects are increasing the damage of natural resources and at the
same time reduce the natural supports for urban inhabitants such as high quality and quantity of water
and air. For example, urban sprawl transforms green spaces to massive built-environment and
increase car dependency that related to air pollution.
The study of green infrastructure is attracting multidisciplinary experts to conduct an intensive
research that aim to broader the opportunity to put into practice in different cities in the world. The
other rationalization of why this sustainable concept of infrastructure creates a centre of attention is
the correlation to a range of aspects such as the economy and public policy. All the research is critical
in the emerging cities mainly metropolitan area in the next 20 years that not centred in developed
country cities but Asia Pacific regions and Africa regions (Gehl, 2008).
The purpose of this paper is explaining several subjects of green infrastructure that related to urban
design context. The first subject is the definition, components and benefits of urban green structure
on different scales of urban design setting. The next topic will emphasize the various technique and
strategies of green infrastructure such as the Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) and the Green
Building. The third point of view is the main challenges of applying the green infrastructure in urban
form. The last but not least is the case studies of success and unsuccessful green infrastructure
implementation in several cities in the world. A conclusion will develop to strengthen the discussion
and provide further insight of green infrastructure.
An Overview of Green Infrastructure
Definition
The definition of Green Infrastructure is multi interpretation due to the context. The definition-context
using in this section is related to urban planning. First definition from The Conservation Fund and the
USDA Forest Service explains Gree I frastru ture as a system of natural elements such as green
spaces, wildlife, forests and wetlands (McMahon & Benedict 2006). This definition emphasizes on how

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the natural attributes provide critical services to the urban habitat such as clean water, air and food
supply. These environmental supporting abilities should develop as urban assets as well as the artificial
infrastructure such as roads and bridges to support urban living. Also, since the ideas propose as the
property of the urban habitats, the group believes that these natural elements should include in long
term investment in urban infrastructure planning. The other description of Gree I frastru ture
which is more integrated derives from a report titled Design, Implementation and Cost Elements of
Green Infrastructure Projects published by European Commission (p24 2010) says that;
Gree i frastru ture is the et ork of atural a d se i-natural areas, features and green
spaces in rural and urban, and terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine areas, which
together enhance ecosystem health and resilience, contribute to biodiversity conservation
and benefit human populations through the maintenance and enhancement of ecosystem
services. Green infrastructure can be strengthened through strategic and co-ordinated
initiatives that focus on maintaining, restoring, improving and connecting existing areas and
features as well as creating new areas and features.
Components
The elements of green infrastructure varies by types and scale. According to McMahon & Benedict
(2006) in their publication title Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st Century, the
elements of this infrastructure consist of two main features; Hubs and Links. Hubs elements are scale-
based from the larger area until small units. These sub-features are including Reserves, Managed
Native Landscape, Working Lands, Regional Parks and Preserves, Community Parks and Natural Areas.
Links are connection-based features with hierarchy of network of Landscape Linkages, Conservation
Corridors, Greenways, Greenbelts, and Ecobelts. Especially for the Ecobelts this is the urban scale
connection that functions as a partition between urban and rural area while benefits the areas in
environmental and societal aspects.
Focus on the Green Infrastructure elements as an urban intervention, several publications provide
various concepts such as the Green Infrastructure: An Integrated Approach to Land Use asserts street
trees, boulevards, plazas, green roofs and walls, sustainable transport, sustainable urban drainage,
rainwater collection and wastewater cleaning, using renewable energy (The Landscape Institute
2013). Similar elements suggested by Greening the Rust Belt: a Green Infrastructure Model for Right
Sizing America's Shrinking Cities are all open spaces in urban area including community gardens,
private and public spaces that used either temporary or active for recreational (Schilling & Logan
2008).
Benefits
The Green Infrastructure as a supportive framework for maintaining sustainability for future planning
provides multi benefits of environmental, economic, social aspect in relatively low proximity in built-
environment context.
Environmental functions are sustain the quality of natural services for urban livelihood. The main point
is balancing natural resources and activities of working and living in built-environment for future
development. The excellent quality of environment widely believes increasing urban livelihood
performance in health and productivity. The other ecological benefit of this green system is the
protection of natural disaster or extreme condition in climate or a scarcity of natural resources issue.
For example, adopting stormwater collection system in built-up coverage area helps to save the run-

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off water to the city water collection as well as provides protection from flood to this field (The
Landscape Institute 2013).
The benefits of this infrastructure in urban economic are saving significant costs of property
maintenance and energy consumption (McMahon & Benedict 2006). Other advantages are upgrading
the value of buildings in the property market and creating an opportunity for green building industry.
A building with green walls or roofs saving more than 40 percent of annual preservation cost compare
to conventional building. In the meantime, it is also possible to use the green roof as urban farming to
produce food (ABC, 2015).
The social benefits of applying this green infrastructure in the urban area are increasing public health
and social inclusion (Gehl, 2008). The health quality of urban habitat can improve because this
infrastructure such as trees in streetscape and parks has functions to reduce air pollution that
produced by vehicles and industrial activities. In the same time, these green features have abilities to
protect urbanites from high ultraviolet (UV) exposures and heatwaves while them walking to the
workplace, school or community services. The quality of urban life also can be achieved by provide
representative opens spaces for people like the social interaction facilities for working, entertainment,
shopping or recreational.
The Green Infrastructure Strategies
There are various strategies of sustainable urban design related to place making, building, water,
energy, equipment and natural disasters. This section will limit the explanation to two strategies;
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) and Green Building.
Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is an Australian approach of the preserve and maintaining
water resources in the urban area. This concept develops from the idea of how water vulnerability in
term of insufficiency and potential of the flood in the built environment could be engineered to
captivating and treating urban water streams. This method is aiming to adapt the natural water cycle
that can implements in the city landscape to building scale.
According to Wong (2007), the strategies of WSUD include managing and integrating of urban water
assets such as potable water, wastewater and stormwater into built-form in city scale to precinct scale,
building level and public art. The WSUD offers a management of water circulation from refining water
consumption in household such as taps, shower, laundry and toilet flushing to reuse or to use for
different purpose such as irrigation for plants. In the urban scale, the framework of WSUD integrates
with architectural and landscape elements to captivate stormwater. For instance, the WSUD
installation can be combined water collection system in boulevards, parks, gardens and green roof
rather than directly flows to sea or evaporate to air.
The central scheme of Green Building is creating sustainability of building performance by protecting
and adapting elements of design and building management system to natural conditions such as the
climate change effects or harsh environments (EPA, 2015). The issues of energy inefficiency, high-cost
maintenance and deprivation on building value increase as primary concern in the property market.
The reasons to apply this concept is that these green ideas help achieving cost efficiency in developing
operational and creating livability in building scale and higher density urban design simultaneously.

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For example, the implementation of green roof and walls is able to use in multi aspects of the building
and relatively easy to integrate in building such as on facades, roofs, arcades, water fixtures, lighting
and windows.
The Main Challenges
There are many challenges in the different context of implementing Green Infrastructure projects. The
challenges are varied since this is a multi-stakeholder’s framework that requires robust collaboration,
mutual understanding and commitment in developing livability in an urban habitat. There are two
different dimensions of challenges will discuss in this section; Global scale and Implementation scale.
First challenge of creating sustainability context in the global urban context according to Jahn Gehl in
the Sustainable Cities Channel (2008) is ho to redu e se seless e erg o su ptio o urs as an
observable attribute of global cities. Gehl asserts that the every city including developed cities or
developing cities should change this pattern of energy consumption in an appropriate way. This issue
is the foremost possible action to apply successful sustainable concepts in a larger scale. The second
subject from Gehl in the interview is the significant urban growth in developing countries in Asia and
Africa. Gehl states the significance of urbanites figure in these areas should consider as an opportunity
to create better urban habitats and not to reproduce worst urban developments in the Western cities.
The final concern state by Gehl is the pattern of China massive urban development that develops with
inappropriate design and has no sense of sustainability urban design.
In case of implementation of green infrastructure, there are several challenges such as financing the
project, encourage government commitment, expand public participation and deficiency of
sustainability urban design experts in developing countries. McMahon & Benedict (2006) states the
permanent financial support is necessary to the green infrastructure project. The priority of funding is
not only for design the green system plan, but the most critical is to ensure the implementation of the
plan is accomplished. Also, McMahon & Benedict are pointing out the role of government to organize
this challenge as an approach to urban infrastructure policy. Furthermore, they focus the last
challenge to increase the involvement of urban society in this green concept. McMahon & Benedict
2006 sa s that it is i porta t to de elop o u it u dersta di g of gree i frastru ture as pu li
e essit ot o l pu li a e it si e the main subject is to preserve liveable urban environment
for future generation. Lastly, Quintero (2012) emphasizes the problem of fewer presence of
sustainable specialist to execute the concept as planner or engineer in developing countries. The
resources of professionals should be the essential element of investment in developing green concept
globally.
The Examples
There many successful examples of green infrastructure development in the global urban areas. One
of the effective implementation of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) as an Australian strategy in
sustainable urban design is Lynbrook Estate in Victoria, which integrated all WSUD elements in the
residential area, especially in street layout. This project in 2000 was successful to achieve the main
objectives of water sustainability in Harsh Australian environment. This project is attracted for both
national and international developers, urban designers and research institutions since it was the first
WSUD project that applied by the private sector. The strong points of this project are the bio-filtered

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features for stormwater treatment, and the cost efficiency in the construction compare to
conventional infrastructure development (Lloyd 2001).
The eco-city of Dongtan is the example of unsuccessful of green infrastructure development. Located
on an island nearby Shanghai, this green city plan should be the sophisticated greenest city in the
world for 500,000 inhabitants. However, since it was plan in 2005 by international urban planning
firms, the implementation of the project was almost nothing in 2009. Most of the population moved
to Shanghai, and the area became an abandoned site. All the sustainability theories and strategies
included in the plan but end with only ten wind turbines. This Do gta ’s proje t is the e a ple of low
sensitive urban design on a human scale and less focus on the balance of environmental and urban
society needs (Danish Architecture Centre 2014; Yale Environment 360 2009).
Conclusion
The Green Infrastructure is the smart sustainable urban design strategy that encourages urban
development stakeholders creating livability environments for urban activities by combining natural
features and artificial features on every level of urban areas including buildings, open spaces and
streetscapes. This particular infrastructure is multi functions and multi advantages in environmental,
economic and social. There are also challenges in the global and the implementation scale of this
concept such as high energy consumption pattern, a significant urban growth in Asia and Africa
countries, financing the projects, government commitment, increase public participation and
providing more sustainable experts of sustainability urban design in developing countries.
There are various strategies of green infrastructure in urban design context such as Water Sensitive
Urban Design (WSUD) as the Australian urban water policy and Green Building. There is also a
successful example of this infrastructure such as Lynbrook Estate in Victoria that achieves
international recognition for WSUD implementation by the private sector. However, there is also
ineffective case of the 2005 Dongtan Eco-city Plan in China that should be the most sustainable city in
the world, but in facts after years, it results in delayed and transform to abandoned area of 10 wind
turbines only and high migration of Dongtan population to Shanghai.

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