Sustainable Cities and Communities

Sustainable Brands® kicks off its largest community gathering today with Sustainable Brands’17 Detroit at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. Over 2,000 business executives along with their teams from 35+ countries across the globe are attending the conference and Activation Hub. In addition, there is anticipated record breaking livestream viewership in collaboration with Detroit Public Television (DPTV).

Earlier in May, Keep America Beautiful Reno, Nevada-based affiiliate Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful (KTMB) hosted its 11th annual Great Community Cleanup -- a local initiative of the Great American Cleanup, the nation's largest community improvement program.

In the twenty-first century, people are moving to cities at an alarming rate. By 2050, nearly three-quarters of the world will reside in urban areas, especially in places across Asia and Africa. As they stand, cities remain ill equipped to absorb the increasing pressures on sectors like transportation, health care, and food.

Students with learning difficulties at a school in Botswana have moved into a new P1.3 million (US$124,000) classroom block funded mainly by Debswana.

Black & Veatch has been selected to provide program management services to Denver Water on the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project.

The project is a major component of the utility’s comprehensive strategy to deliver safe, reliable water service and provide resilience to its system in the face of future threats including floods, wildfires and the potential impacts of climate change. The expansion will more than double current reservoir capacity and improve water supply dependability for the 1.4 million people Denver Water serves in the metro area.

The Ray is featured in the Atlas Blog

Among the many crises bearing down on our collective horizon, perhaps none is so uniquely threatening to populations worldwide as that of water scarcity. Tomorrow morning, more than one billion people will wake up without access to clean water, a number that is only expected to quadruple by 2030.

As an industry, we can no longer merely ponder renewable energy’s march on the power grid. It's here, and customers are increasingly demanding it.

Infrastructure Week allows us to reflect on the modernization needed to drive the new digital grid. A comprehensive view of the infrastructure elements needed to create a more efficient and sustainable energy landscape should include communications networks and embedded computing. Utilities, technology vendors and community leaders will need to work in collaboration to ensure all elements are considered for the digital grid to thrive.

A defining characteristic of the remarkable industrial development experienced over the last 100 years has been a ‘make-use-dispose’ approach to resource utilization in industrial processes. While this ‘linear economy’ approach has resulted in enormous advances for societies, it also has created an unsustainable demand for and use of resources and materials. With global population expected to swell to an estimated 9 billion by 2050, the intelligent use of limited resources in production and consumption has become a subject of socio-political, environmental, and economic discussion.