The Zofnass Research on City Scale fills a gap between the professions of planners and engineers, both contributing to the fundamental process of planning and building infrastructure for cities. It responds to the urgency of integrating these practices, with the objective of creating sustainable urban environments. And forms the foundation of a common collaborative platform, among public authorities, planners, and engineers, enabling those who have traditionally functioned in silos to work together in infrastructure planning.

The Zofnass approach identifies synergistic effects of strategies to combine entities and avoid replicated effort and costs, connect by-products and feedstock needs and reduce initial demand. Synergies can enable a systems approach to financing rather than only project finance, altering perceptions of cost (e.g. multiple cross-sector revenue streams through shared problem solving). Finally, it helps balance consumption and demand for infrastructure: less demand – less production need – less installed capacity for infrastructure – less cost.

The Planning Guidelines do not prescribe specific actions to reach the sustainability objectives. They determine the direction of planning and leave specific actions open-ended. They facilitate the development of customized actions to each city’s unique context, conditions, and priorities and by promoting at the same time innovation, allowing for the incorporation of new or improved technologies as they become available. For more information visit: http://zofnass.gsd.harvard.edu/planning/

The research was made at the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure of Harvard Graduate School of Design and concluded with the ‘Planning Sustainable Cities’ publication in 2016, directed and edited by Prof. S.N.Pollalis.To order the book: https://www.routledge.com/Planning-Sustainable-Cities-An-infrastructure-based-approach/Pollalis/p/book/9781138188426