Planning robust 21st century US urban infrastructure: Socially driven transitions from pre-industrial, carbon intensive, and carbon-sensitive infrastructure

Infrastructure has undergone dramatic transformations since the Industrial Revolution. This chapter addresses the evolution and patterns of selected types of infrastructures over time and factors are suggested that have influenced the changes as a basis for moving forward and shaping infrastructure policy into the 21st century, supporting its mission for users and the environment. “Critical infrastructures” are distinguished as those “whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof”. The carbon-intensive period was shaped by infrastructure that addressed increased suburbanization and health and environmental policies. The transition toward the carbon-sensitive period has emerged largely as an outcome of goals of environmental movements and the focus on climate change late in the 20th century.