TY - JOUR
T1 - Local public right of way for surface and subsurface resource integration
AU - Matthews, Terri
AU - Laefer, Debra F.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - A utilidor is a ‘system of systems’ infrastructural solution to the ‘subsurface spaghetti’ problem resulting from direct burial of utility transmission infrastructure beneath the public right of way (PROW). The transition from direct burial to utilidors in older, dense American cities has generally not occurred, despite the potential to increase system performance in a long-term, financially and environmentally sustainable manner, because it would require reform of local planning practices and of utility pricing to support financing within a complex regulatory system. Utilidor adoption in New York City (NYC) would be a significant local infrastructure transition, amplifying the need for locality-based research, that would occur while each utility sector undergoes its own infrastructure transitions, thereby increasing the level of regulatory complexity. This paper applies transitions analysis, recursive collective action theory, and capacity to act analysis to NYC’s experience with its PROW subsurface spaghetti problem and utilidor implementation to demonstrate a place-based methodology that identifies specific sources of resistance to innovative subsurface design and feasible pathways for resolving them. This methodology would be transferable for application to other American cities or classes of American cities to supplement the limits of generalised subsurface and subsurface resource integration research for practitioner application.
AB - A utilidor is a ‘system of systems’ infrastructural solution to the ‘subsurface spaghetti’ problem resulting from direct burial of utility transmission infrastructure beneath the public right of way (PROW). The transition from direct burial to utilidors in older, dense American cities has generally not occurred, despite the potential to increase system performance in a long-term, financially and environmentally sustainable manner, because it would require reform of local planning practices and of utility pricing to support financing within a complex regulatory system. Utilidor adoption in New York City (NYC) would be a significant local infrastructure transition, amplifying the need for locality-based research, that would occur while each utility sector undergoes its own infrastructure transitions, thereby increasing the level of regulatory complexity. This paper applies transitions analysis, recursive collective action theory, and capacity to act analysis to NYC’s experience with its PROW subsurface spaghetti problem and utilidor implementation to demonstrate a place-based methodology that identifies specific sources of resistance to innovative subsurface design and feasible pathways for resolving them. This methodology would be transferable for application to other American cities or classes of American cities to supplement the limits of generalised subsurface and subsurface resource integration research for practitioner application.
KW - Recursive collective action
KW - Transitions analysis
KW - Utilidor
KW - capacity to act
KW - infrastructure transition
KW - subsurface planning
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U2 - 10.1080/10286608.2022.2095371
DO - 10.1080/10286608.2022.2095371
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85138221958
SN - 1028-6608
VL - 39
SP - 309
EP - 327
JO - Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems
JF - Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems
IS - 4
ER -