Rapid Planning

Sustainable Infrastructure, Environmental and Resource Management for highly dynamic metropolises

Rapid Planning

The Rapid Planning Project is an action-oriented research project that has been developed under the umbrella of the Future Megacities Research Programme of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Rapid Planning seeks to develop a rapid trans-sectoral urban planning methodology with a focus on urban basic services infrastructure, specifically targeting supply and disposal infrastructure. The service sectors covered by the project include energy, water, waste water, solid waste, and urban agriculture/ food systems. Trans-sectoral planning strives to take advantage of potential synergies when linking these indivi­dual infrastructural sectors together. Thus, cities can benefit from new tools, techniques and policies to use their resources as efficient as possible, through optimising planning processes and at the same time reducing the cost of service.

Rapid Planning is conceptualised as a form of integrative overview planning providing the essential tools and capacity necessary to establish sustainable and resource efficient infrastructure management in highly dynamic (e.g. rapidly growing) cities in an adequate time. Rapid Planning allocates the instruments to speed up planning and implementation processes with view on sustainable, financial and climate related aspects according to the needs of the stakeholders. 11 German partners, together with UNHABITAT, developed such methodology and tools, whilst three partner cities (Kigali/Rwanda, Da Nang/Vietnam, Frankfurt (Main)/ Germany) are involved in the application of Rapid Planning.

Within this project, ifak has developed an easy-to-apply simulator, allow-ing the simulatoin of urban systems with particular emphasis on interactions and synergies between the various infrastructure sectors. Further­more, it also allows a sustainability assessment of scenarios of future developments