Infrastructure

Read the text below and summarize the information presented. Fill in the following chart:

Chart 5.2

Infrastructure As the Fundamental Facilities And Systems Serving a Country, City Or Area

Definition	Type	Components	Challenges	Influencing factors

The infrastructure of a city is its physical or structural part. It includes transportation systems (roads, bridges, highways, public transportation, etc.), sewage system, utility systems (gas, electricity, water treatment and delivery), and buildings (schools, court houses, sports facilities, and its public and private housing developments). If a city's infrastructure is old and in decay, this makes these important systems unsafe, unattractive, or unreliable, and so that city is not such a great place to live anymore. Fewer people will want to move to such a place to live and work. Also, fewer businesses will want to open offices and factories in a city with a deteriorating infrastructure, so there will be fewer jobs for the people who live there.

The design of new infrastructure and the management of maintenance processes involve thousands of technical and human challenges. Challenges related to infrastructure sustainability are numerous, and their relationship to the global economy is important. A better understanding of infrastructure usage can also provide tremendous benefits. For example, a highway alignment designed to minimize vehicle energy consumption can reduce a city’s carbon footprint and, thus, help sustain the environment. Infrastructure serves as the interface between people and the world around them. It is used on a daily basis and can have a major impact on the health and well being of the global population. A case in point is the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that claimed more than 4,000 lives and was, in part, caused by the country’s poorly maintained water and sanitation systems. Other issues in which the world’s infrastructure has an important role to play include CO2 emissions, climate change, earthquakes, severe weather, terrorist attacks, coastal flooding, hazardous waste, and the depletion of non-renewable resources. And it is important to note that infrastructure concerns are not limited to developing economies; developed economies, including those of the United States and Canada, currently face challenges directly tied to deteriorating infrastructure.

Given that worldwide urbanization is accelerating, a significant battleground for sustaining infrastructure is at the city- and local-government levels. This infrastructure must be designed and constructed such that it balances the need for growth, development, and change with the equally critical requirement for sustainability and improvement in the overall quality of people’s lives.

Gotham Gazette's Reading NYC Book Club met with city official Kate Ascher (she is executive vice president for infrastructure at the Economic Development Corporation) to discuss her book “The Works: Anatomy of a City.” Summarize information presented in several paragraphs giving them the following headlines:

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29