Municipalities worldwide are confronted with the need to take long-term decisions about ageing water infrastructure in the face of unpredictable future developments. Previous studies on long-term decision making have proposed solutions targeted at the domain of either politics or planning. This study combines insights from the domains of policy, politics, and planning by using the Multiple Streams Framework to explain what enables municipalities to take forward-looking investment decisions.

The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source.

Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is becoming a more popular means of dealing with climate change and climate change-related events. However, as the concept of BGI is relatively new, many urban and rural planners are unfamiliar with the barriers they may face during the lifecycle of a BGI project. As a result, some have been hesitant to adopt BGI solutions. The literature has unveiled many of the barriers that inhibit the successful development of BGI, however, this information has yet to be presented in a manner that allows for easy identification.

This new report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in collaboration with the Clingendael Institute and other Dutch research institutes points to pressure on security and migration arising from too little, too much or polluted water. Many integrated solutions are possible to divert this trend towards a sustainable and climate-resilient world.

As African cities expand so does the pressure to improve infrastructure and extend key public services for the growing urban populations. With limited tax receipts, local governments are struggling to finance new urban development or even maintain existing infrastructure. As land has inherent advantages in generating revenue, Land-based financing (LBF) is being seriously considered or piloted as an innovative and additional source for enhancing budgets for infrastructure projects, public services and wider sustainable development.