Sustainable urban transformation - On the adoption of innovative infrastructure technologies in city planning processes

By limiting excavation needs and land use constraints and increasing flexibility for introducing new infrasystems, multiutility tunnels (MUTs), where different infrasystems are co-located, may be essential for enabling the development of resource efficient and sustainable cities. This research proposal focuses on how to make such solutions a part of urban renewal planning.

It has proven difficult to develop "radical" innovations in connection with sustainable city development, particularly when they concern large technical systems.

The larger system, and the more radical an innovation is, the more difficult it is to get all stakeholders aboard and integrate it in the urban planning process. In test-bed projects it may be possible, but in normal planning processes, it is rather impossible.

The aim of this project is to contribute knowledge, strategies and working methods for making new infrastructure technologies part of the planning for city transformations and handling challenges and conflicts related to unconventional solutions in planning processes.

To achieve this, we will analyze two ongoing planning processes related to city renewal projects, in which the prefabricated infraculvert developed for the housing fair of 2017 in Linköping, is considered.

The case analysis will particularly focus on how the infraculvert became part of the initial planning of the project, and which organizational and knowledge-related challenges that occurred as a consequence and their effects.