Neighbourhood Design and Affordability: Addressing Infrastructure Challenges through Sustainable Design

Rapid urbanization presents daunting challenges to the conservation of our natural resources and environment, particularly in cities where sprawl becomes the dominant development model. Sprawling cities with newly built neighborhoods, where green fields used to be, place extensive demands on infrastructure systems. The high cost of extending these systems into peri-urban areas is more often than not passed on to homeowners, thus greatly impacting housing affordability. In addition, there is an aesthetic impact since we observe that the natural features of entire regions are all but eliminated and the developed landscape bears no resemblance to what it was prior to development.