honor place
grow participation
embody justice
Foster Resilience
Regenerate Life
What is living infrastructure?
Article
• 11 min read
• 10.21.2024
A framework for climate-resilient communities
Meandering through Magic Johnson Park in Willowbrook, an unincorporated community in South L.A., you might be surprised to know it was once a toxic industrial site used for oil storage and distribution. Later, county officials approved a 300-unit apartment complex on the site, which became home to a tight-knit, multi-generational community of Black families. These families were displaced from their homes in 2009, after soil and groundwater tests revealed toxic contamination that residents say caused numerous deaths and adverse health effects.
The site carries a deep, painful history of systemic racism and ecological harm. Yet today, it is slowly becoming a place of repair and regeneration. A maintenance worker clears leaves from a lakeside storm drain, pausing to wave at someone leaving the community center. In the wetland at the water’s edge, a heron wades through native willows and cattails on the hunt for fish. Billions of microbes in the water at her feet provide natural filtration, breaking down and removing pollutants from the water. Meanwhile, a network of stormwater infrastructure collects runoff that would otherwise drain out to sea from the 42.1-square-mile Compton Creek Watershed. Instead, it gets diverted to the park where it’s treated, stored in the lake, and used for irrigation.
The built, natural, and social forces work together, nurturing a thriving ecosystem and demonstrating living infrastructure in action. But how is it different from conventional infrastructure?
Living infrastructure is the practice of bringing together built, natural, and social systems in ways that help people and places thrive.
Shifting infrastructure towards life
While infrastructure may call to mind industrial objects built by technical experts, living infrastructure can be thought of as a practice that respects and facilitates the dynamic processes at the core of all life.
Gray and gray-green infrastructures have often overlooked and undermined the relationships and natural systems that form the backbone of healthy communities and ecologies. This has manifested as states building highways through the middle of historically Black neighborhoods, utilities erecting dams that block salmon from their ancestral spawning grounds, and fossil fuel companies running carbon capture pipelines that rupture, poisoning rural communities and wildlife.
So while living infrastructure may incorporate certain gray and gray-green technologies, it will always pair them with social and ecological practices grounded in equity, reciprocity, and community participation. For example, Magic Johnson Park uses “hard” infrastructure to divert runoff into a balanced, communal ecosystem that improves water quality in South L.A. and seeks to repair a legacy of pollution and extraction.
By acknowledging that built, natural, and social systems are inextricably linked and ever-changing, living infrastructure practitioners can infuse infrastructure with a spirit of cooperation and adaptation that stands to benefit all life.
Unprecedented climate funding is going to infrastructure
Today, an influx of federal and local funding for climate projects presents a pivotal opportunity to build infrastructure that fosters social equity and ecological care.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal marks the single largest investment in built and natural systems in American history, including more than $50 billion to address droughts, heat, floods, and wildfires. Similarly, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provides over $3 billion for Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants and $4 billion for drought mitigation, among other funding for integrated infrastructure projects. This funding presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine the nation’s infrastructure.
In Los Angeles, Measures W, H, A, and M are projected to generate nearly $1.6 billion annually for projects related to stormwater management, housing and homelessness services, parks, and transportation projects.
These efforts reflect a broad and growing commitment to build infrastructure that meets community needs. Yet if these projects neglect to work with and for living systems, they run the risk of repeating history.
A framework built for living systems
Recognizing this opportunity to embrace the practice of living infrastructure in a changing climate, our team asked: How can we design infrastructure that heals our places, nurtures the full potential of our communities, and helps us thrive in partnership with the living world? This question led to the development of the Living Infrastructure Framework.
This framework does not introduce new concepts, but integrates the wisdom of Indigenous, environmental, climate, and social justice organizations in communities across history and cultures. The framework aims to apply these approaches to infrastructure to support a paradigm shift from harmful to life-affirming systems.
The Living Infrastructure Framework invites us to honor place, grow participation, embody justice, foster resilience, and regenerate life.
From theory to practice: The Living Infrastructure Field Kit, a free tool for L.A. residents to plan and fund local projects
Accelerate Resilience Los Angeles (ARLA) and Spherical collaborated with several L.A.-based partners to develop the Living Infrastructure Field Kit as a starting point for L.A. residents. The Field Kit is a free tool for envisioning and planning local living infrastructure projects and securing the funding to get these ideas off the ground.
The Living Infrastructure Framework serves as a guiding resource for creating projects within the Field Kit.
Above: Magic Johnson Park features examples of living infrastructure such as walking paths and exercise equipment.
Anyone can create living infrastructure
The beauty of the Field Kit is that it’s for everyone, not just engineers and city planners. It starts with an idea and a group of collaborators.
The tool can be used to map out a community garden, turn a vacant lot into a neighborhood resilience hub, or even get ideas for a multi-year renovation project like Magic Johnson Park. Teams might choose to focus on schoolyards, parks, green streets, resilience plans, or urban forestry. Residents can use the Field Kit to lead the way on implementing stormwater solutions throughout L.A., and tap into funding from Measures W,H, A, and M in the process.
Beyond the Field Kit
As humanity stands at the crossroads of climate change and systemic inequities, the Living Infrastructure Framework offers more than just a better way to build. It envisions a path toward resilience, healing, and regeneration.
Embracing living infrastructure means rethinking how to design, build, and care for our environments. It means creating community-driven, just, localized, and deeply interconnected systems.
With the right tools and mindset, our neighborhoods can be transformed into places that support both human and ecological well-being, now and for generations to come.
