1. Rethinking Infrastructure Design

For the first time in history, more than half the world’s population will be living in urban areas. Cities offer enormous opportunities, but they also create problems that degrade the environment, thus the quality of life in the city, surrounding suburban areas and downstream settlements. By 2030, it is projected that 4.9 billion people will be living in cities. Managing it in a sustainable way provides a unique opportunity. The objectives of water management in urban areas are to ensure that no damage is caused during extreme participation and that long periods of droughts do not cause problems in cities or the countryside. The Blue Green Dream project promotes a new paradigm for efficient planning and management of the urban environment. This volume introduces the methods by which mutual interactions of urban water infrastructure (blue assets) and urban vegetated areas (green assets) are taken into account in the synergy of spatial planning and optimised modelling of ecosystems’ performance indicators. This method of planning should make future developments cheaper to build, their users will pay lower utility bills (for water, energy, heating), such developments will be more pleasant to live in and property value would likely be higher.