You go to the sink for a glass of water, or start up the air conditioner on a hot day. You drive across a freeway overpass, or bike across a river. You take your full garbage and compost cans out to the curb on the right day of the week, and when you come home they're empty.
Most people hardly give such routine actions a second thought. But each is an interaction with an infrastructure system that is more fragile than many realize.
How can we make this system more resilient? That's the topic for a new event series hosted by Metro, the Urban Land Institute and the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure. The series, "Infrastructure Crisis, Sustainable Solutions," will explore how regional cooperation and smart investments can respond to growing environmental challenges and proactively foster healthy and livable communities.
It isn't a series designed for policy wonks and planners alone, said Noah Siegel, one of the organizers at Metro. A wide range of advocacy groups, foundations and civic organizations have a stronger interest in functioning infrastructure than may be immediately obvious.
Organizers hope these groups will attend along with the public.
"We're having a civic conversation about this topic of infrastructure," Siegel said.
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July 15 event highlights risks of infrastructure silos
Most infrastructure systems are controlled by a byzantine array of agencies. The water from your tap could go through pipes and under streets owned by several jurisdictions as it makes its way from some mountain reservoir or underground aquifer to your glass. In a single trip, you might drive on roads owned by multiple cities, counties and states, crossing rails and bridges that belong to a private company like Union Pacific or a transit agency like TriMet.
Separated infrastructure systems have some advantages, but they also present challenges for planning and investing in a future where roads, pipes and power lines will be more stressed by environmental challenges. And they make it hard to fully serve people's needs equitably and affordably.
For the first event in the series, to be held July 15 at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center in Portland, several regional experts will discuss the consequences of separated infrastructure systems and how agencies might cooperate to better integrate such assets into the future.
The event will feature Liz Kelly, vice president of engineering firm CH2M; Dave Unsworth, director of capital projects at TriMet; and Todd Vogel, managing director of the Seattle-based Loom Foundation, which funds projects connecting environment and equity. The panel will be moderated by Andre Baugh, an expert on boosting diversity in large infrastructure projects.
Vogel will discuss a project working to connect environmental and equity advocacy organizations to boost access to light rail in Seattle's Rainier Valley, one of that city's most diverse but impoverished communities. The project seeks to bridge gaps in understanding that have meant a light rail project hasn't served residents in the neighborhood as well as it could, because many have concerns about safety when walking to transit stations, Vogel said.
"As a public we spend billions of dollars" on infrastructure, Vogel said. "Everyone puts money in."
But disconnected thinking has often meant that people of color and other disadvantaged groups don't benefit from those investments as well as they should, he added.
"We need to rethink the way we make infrastructure investments," Vogel said. "We need to think across silos."
The panel will discuss strategies to find common strengths and build a more resilient, connected infrastructure system – so people of all means can continue to rely on things working when times get tough.
Future events in the infrastructure series will explore how disruptive technologies can play a role in rethinking infrastructure and how to find more sustainable funding sources to build new infrastructure and maintain what's already built.
The July 15 panel discussion begins at 4:30 p.m. at 2250 SE Water Avenue in Portland.