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The coronavirus pandemic has placed incredible pressure on state and local budgets, with some projecting a total shortfall of over $500 billion.1 At the same time, the pandemic has also highlighted the disastrous effects of systemic social inequity. Coronavirus fatalities in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities have been disproportionately high, primarily as a result of discrimination; healthcare access and utilization; higher rates of occupation as essential workers; educational, income, and wealth gaps; and crowded housing conditions, eviction, and homelessness.
The pandemic has also shown us significant gaps in our ability to quickly bounce back from a crisis. Adding resilience into our built environment, such as equipping buildings to serve as community hot spots, testing centers, or hospital surge capacity if and when the next pandemic or natural disaster strikes will be a critical step to better preparedness later.
One way to help address the simultaneous issues of social inequity, the need for greater resiliency, and budgetary short falls is to ensure public infrastructure serves more than one function. Triple-duty infrastructure follows the rationale of triple bottom line analysis—to be truly valuable, an investment must benefit the economy, equity, and the environment. This is sometimes referred to as profits, people, and planet. In this scenario, everyone wins.
The most notable barrier to ensuring triple-duty infrastructure can be city capital planning and budget processes which typically occur in silos and are only reviewed together once the planning is complete. Triple-duty infrastructure requires an integrated planning process and interdepartmental collaboration from the very beginning.
The action plan below includes elements to consider when implementing a process to make triple duty infrastructure a reality along with many examples of successes.
Action Plan
Assess community infrastructure needs
- Undertake community workshops to understand what community members want and need. Make use of digital tools to enable virtual participation
- Every community will have different needs and challenges, so be sure to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, when developing climate resilience plans for Lower Manhattan, it was necessary to look at each neighborhood separately.3 This neighborhood-specific approach ensures infrastructure integrates within the existing contexts to maximize co-benefits for the community.
Create a value-based structure to tie infrastructure to the community needs
- Prioritize essential needs and services based on community feedback and a triple bottom line approach.
- Undertake a multi-scale gap analysis. Where are we furthest from where the community wants to be?
Enact a public policy requiring all infrastructure decision to have a community, equity, and environment benefit in addition to their core function.
- The UK’s Public Services (Social Value) Act passed in 2011 is one such model to consider.4 The act makes social value a key consideration in public sector procurement decisions, and thus a factor in the way projects are planned and implemented.
Redesign the city capital planning and budgeting processes to break through traditional silos
- The City of West Chicago included intergovernmental collaboration as part of their 2018 strategic planning, suggesting a shared services model among other innovative approaches.
- Consider the use of technology in breaking down silos. GIS-based systems can enable officials to see connections amongst projects while other systems allow for experimenting with project variables to see the greatest impact
- Create an organizational structure and consistent decision protocol that supports long term implementation of an integrated approach.
Develop a data-driven capital planning process
- Use data driven heatmaps to define the focus zones within a larger community that provide greatest community benefit. See – Integrated Data action plan
- Empower community and local government agencies to engage with the plan online and at community events.
Develop a data-driven capital planning process
- Use data driven heatmaps to define the focus zones within a larger community that provide greatest community benefit. See – Integrated Data action plan
- Empower community and local government agencies to engage with the plan online and at community events.
Identify all available funding sources
- For example, the equity portion of the capital stack can be tackled by leveraging current policy tools and tax incentives, such as Opportunity Zone tax credits.
Develop a comprehensive communications plan to both roll out new process across city departments and to educate the public on benefits and expectations for engagement.
AECOM Resources and Case Studies
https://infrastructure.aecom.com/2020/unlocking-the-social-value-of-infrastructure-investment
https://aecom.com/without-limits/article/preparation-is-the-first-step-to-resilience/
https://aecom.com/without-limits/article/embracing-nature-will-transform-the-cities-of-the-future/
https://aecom.com/without-limits/article/refurbishment-vs-new-build-the-carbon-and-business-case/