2BG: Black, blue and green - Integrated infrastructure planning as key to sustainable urban water systems

Quality in life is possible only within the frames of a healthy and sustainable environment. The ambition of 2BG was to contribute to global sustainable development by demonstrating novel ways for cities to interact with Earth’s water: from today’s »consume-and-discharge« to an integrated and recycling mode of interaction. To close the urban water cycle we need to focus on all assets of water in the city; from drinking water to ecosystem services and from industrial functions to water’s aesthetic and socio-cultural dimensions. The project, through a transdisciplinary approch involving more than 8 disciplines, aimed to develop concepts, methods and tools for changing the prevailing sewer based discharge systems into self-sustaining and climate-change adapted solutions, based on infiltration of storm and wastewater at the source, combined with appropriate control of water quality and extended reuse. The "Forest and Landscape" unit of Copenhagen University, Faculty of Life Sciences was overall project coordinator. My role in the project was to identify how citizens involvement could be enhanced when implementing new solutions involving their private ground and how to help professionals to understand and tackle the complexity of decision making when retrofitting urban spaces.