Our Mission
Transportation, water, energy, environmental, and communications
infrastructure systems have supported New York's position as a world
capital in business, media, and the arts. These systems are now
showing signs of strain, threatening the region's ability to further
grow and evolve. The agencies that build and operate these
infrastructure systems face significant challenges, from the erosion of
their assets due to heavy use and inadequate funding for maintenance,
to the more far-reaching threats of climate change and economic
competition. Addressing these challenges requires implementing
innovative technologies, developing new financing approaches, and
adopting new institutional and management strategies – all while
building a workforce with the skills and flexibility to adapt to
change.
The CUNY Institute for Urban Systems (CIUS) was
created in 2001 to identify innovative solutions to the problems of
aging capital stock, environmental sustainability, and urban economic
competitiveness in the management of transportation, energy, water,
buildings, and other infrastructure systems. CIUS works to bridge the
professional and academic realms through research, education, policy
advisement, and advancing the state of professional practice. It
draws its strength from the City University of New York's distinguished
faculty in engineering, architecture, economics, urban planning,
geography, law and management, as well as from the depth of experience
of expert professionals from around the region.
Context
To modernize and expand its infrastructure in an era of rapid change
and constrained resources, the metropolitan region's next generation of
infrastructure investment must address three key challenges:
Technology:
The emerging wide scale applications of decentralized computing and
communications technologies enables more dynamic control and provides
more real-time information to infrastructure managers and users. This,
in turn, enables infrastructure to serve new strategic goals and to
provide greater benefits.
Institutions:
In order to realize these benefits, institutions developed in the 20th
century to build infrastructure now must transform themselves to
operate, control and finance a new generation of infrastructure.
Finance:
New technologies and institutional change require new financing and
capital planning strategies. These, in turn, will also impact how
infrastructure institutions are structured and governed, and how
technology is used in their management.
Critical Issues
CIUS asks:
How does technology change the design and use of the infrastructure, and how do consumers react to these changes?
How can the institutions that plan and manage infrastructure best incorporate adapt to technological change?
How can infrastructure managers meet the needs for expansion while investing in the next generation of technology?
How can we take greater advantage of nature's "environmental services" as an alternative to the capital-intensive infrastructure systems favored in the last century?
What must be done to help the workforce adapt to changing technological skills and operational practices?