Digging Our Own (Climate) Graves: Understanding Barriers to Green Infrastructure Development

In this episode, Dr. Marissa Matsler (@oh_the_urbanity) talks with Dr. David Manuel-Navarrete about the evolutionary forces working against wider adoption of green infrastructure in cities today. They discuss his recent publication in Anthropocene titled "Intentional disruption of path-dependencies in the Anthropocene: Gray versus green water infrastructure regimes in Mexico City, Mexico", in which he uses human niche theory to analyze the feedback loops which encourage cities to continue investment in grey infrastructure at the expense of green infrastructure solutions that could help with the social and environmental challenges of climate change. Dr. Manuel-Navarrete shares more about his case study research in Mexico City and his transdisciplinary approach to science. This interview is wide-reaching touching on historic infrastructure transitions, the ways in which humans differ from termites, the need to bring the subjective and the objective together in scientific inquiry, and a hopeful message describing how we can work collaboratively to change our current destructive path dependencies. You can listen to Dr. Manuel-Navarrete discuss some of these topics in Spanish in our previous episode, Paradigmas Insostinebles en Nuestras Ciudades.

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, e-mail us at futurecitiespodcast@gmail.com or find us on Twitter @FutureCitiesPod. Learn more about the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) at www.sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience.