Food for thought, an expanded definition via
California's Infrastructure Cluster:
Quote:
In today’s economy and society, infrastructure can be viewed as having four core components:
• “Bricks and Mortar” infrastructure, which represents the most tangible physical elements such as public facilities, housing, transportation systems, power plants, transmission lines, and other improvements.
• “Resource” infrastructure, such as forests, parks, rivers, beaches, wetlands and energy sources that comprise our natural assets and systems.
• “Information” infrastructure, which includes technology and systems that provide access to the Internet, intellectual property, archives, digital content and the means to communicate information and ideas.
• “Human infrastructure,” that includes the workforce in both the private and public sectors. This human infrastructure must have the necessary skills to compete in the global economy and to design, plan, build and manage the advanced infrastructure of the 21st century.
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One of the reasons we fare as well as we do may be that that our density figures are comparatively favourable:
1. Seattle, WA >> 2,842.1/km2
2. Newark, NJ >> 5,034.8/km2
3. Long Beach, CA >> 3,772.45/km2
4. Oakland, CA >> 2,818.1/km2
5. Windsor, ON >> 1,473.5/km2 (metro 316.1/km2)
6. Halifax, NS >> 1,077.2/km2
7. Hamilton, ON >> 451.6/km2
8. Brampton, ON >> 1,626.5/km2
9. Mississauga, ON >> 2,544.89/km2
10. Sacramento, CA >> 1,818/km2
Although "Infrastructure" is also a double-edged sword. For example, storylines in
Newark, NJ are familiar-sounding, as is
Brampton:
“Brampton, meanwhile, is plowing ahead with plans that will make it the hot spot for horizontal growth — a.k.a. sprawl — in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Its plans will end up paving over what remains of thousands of hectares of rural land within the city boundaries, just as neighbouring Mississauga did…. Brampton, he points out, pre-empted the growth plan by designating the entire area within its city limits for urban expansion — including vast stretches that are currently farmland — so it would not have to justify to the province why it’s allowing new growth outside what’s termed the “urban boundary.”
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Another positive profile that might have been mentioned previously came from
Corporate Knights’ Most Sustainable Cities in Canada 2011. In the most recent rankings, Hamilton moved to #4 most sustainable medium-sized Canadian city, up from #7 the year before (in a field of seven).