Co-Benefits & Tradeoffs

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

There are infrastructure trade-offs, as well as synergies, between environment, health, wellbeing and livability outcomes. In many instances, these infrastructure synergies and trade-offs have not yet been fully assessed.

Examples of tradeoffs, for example with green infrastructure installations, include considering the health benefit potentials of expanding green infrastructure including reductions in air pollution, as well as social well-being and community development, versus greater habitat for some disease vectors. In the same way, green infrastructure may generate livability benefits in a given area offering greater resilience in terms of extreme storm and heat events, as well as economic renewal and neighborhood beautification, which may give rise to potential gentrification and related social justice tradeoffs.

Patterns of tradeoffs and synergies can vary widely across different city and policy regime types. These differences often arise out of particular spatial features that are specific to a given city type or path dependencies particular to a specific policy regime type. The network’s work in this area seeks to capture linkages, synergies, and trade-offs, considering human environment interactions with all seven infrastructure sectors together. The network is also conducting work to understand approaches to messaging for various audiences based on multiple co-benefits, including perceived social benefits, perceptions of individual health risks and benefits, as well as economic cost-benefits.