Sustainable and Resilient Cities: Is It an Infrastructure Problem?

The behavior of urban network infrastructures and their interactions have direct and indirect consequences on the risk management and the optimization of their environmental performance. By urban networks, we include all the urban technical networks like transportation, energy, water supply, waste water, and telecommunications able to spread risks and to optimize the environmental performances in cities. These infrastructures are qualified by the term critical in a risk assessment approach and sometimes green when they are design with the sustainability rules and practices. In our approach, we analyze these infrastructures with one filter related to the resilience and another one related to the sustainability. These two concepts are important for decision makers and also for concerned population. We present the analysis bout the complementarities between the two approaches. These remarks are based on our experience of Paris. The key elements are the frugality, resources, resistance, absorption, impact, and recover. The proposed analysis is based on a bottom/up approach to consolidate the theoretical analysis. Some conclusions will be discussed on the difference between the principles of sustainability and resilience in the field of urban networks.