How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

“How Infrastructure Works” shows us the infrastructure systems we depend on and helps us see their challenges and opportunities. The greatest challenge: adapting these systems to climate change as we transition them to renewable energy. As the book makes clear, new energy sources are within our grasp and will bring enormous benefits.

Deb Chachra is an engineering professor and frequent writer about technology and society.

The big ideas for Urban Atlanta:

• There is abundant renewable energy available, and we know how to harness it.
• Renewable energy can be generated in completely different ways than carbon-based energy, from rooftop panels and neighborhood installations to large solar farms. These sources will dramatically lower the environmental impact that energy production has today. 
• There are economic reasons for investing in renewable energy. The most important: It will greatly reduce the cost of energy, which will help with affordability.
• Some forms of infrastructure benefit greatly from “network effects,” which means that their importance grows with each place served or person added. An obvious example is transit, which is why efforts to expand MARTA and other regional transit systems are so important.
• As we know all too well in Atlanta, not properly maintaining infrastructure systems can have disastrous consequences. As climate change advances, we need to invest more in maintenance and add redundancy to some systems.