Given the relative infancy of the field, developing increased capacity to develop and implement sustainable infrastructure is an important direction for local governments and their partners in industry and other government agencies.
Key participants for building internal and external capacity and political support include:
- Municipal staff
- Consulting engineers
- Infrastructure users (developers, businesses, homeowners)
Capacity-building actions can include:
- Development of internal management systems that provide for collaboration among different engineering disciplines, as well as planning, parks, and finance staff.
- Increasing internal knowledge and expertise of system options and specific technologies. Projects can include internal research and collaboration with researchers, other communities, and national associations.
- Developing internal knowledge of various financing and contracting approaches, and how to select among them.
- Providing, promoting or facilitating training for consulting engineers, contractors, and public participants on systems chosen to be piloted or adopted. Programs should cover the technologies, management and financing, and include training on the systems.
- Educating the public in advance about sustainable infrastructure systems under consideration, to ensure on-going public support. This is important given that this infrastructure can be unfamiliar and may be come part of daily experience – e.g. swales.
San Francisco, Marin County, and many other jurisdictions have diverted half of their solid waste into recycling programs by developing a wide range of programs and policies, such as organic waste composting, landfill bans, and agreements with private waste haulers. Using these success stories as case studies can help other local governments come up to speed on planning and implementing these types of programs.
