338
quality improvement, material efficiency, design efficiency, and water efficiency,
the technologies or practices applied in sustainable building essentially require to be
focused, so as to generate a larger amassed impact.
Infrastructure and Transportation
Traditional urban infrastructure is not only causing trillions of dollars every year,
but also playing a viral role in creating adverse environmental and climate perplexity [22, 23]. Thus, deurbanization and rural sustainable infrastructure shall indeed
be a network to provide the “ingredients” for solving the current climatic challenges
[24–26]. The main components of this approach are the roads, highways, bridges,
and tunnels; management of rural development is to be achieved for climate adaptation, less heat stress, more biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as for the more
anthropocentric functions such as increased quality of life through re-creating and
providing shade and shelter in and around rural area which is connected to the cities
[27, 28]. Subsequently, rural infrastructure will serve to provide an ecological
framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surrounding community that would achieve more holistic road, highway, bridge, and tunnel construction and management to run the daily life smoothly in connecting rural areas to
urban areas.
Water
Global environment has been impacted by the urban water cycle by accelerating
evaporation which creates severe water pollution and cooling effect on earth and
climate change [29, 30]. Water covers 75% of the earth’s surface and out of this 97%
is salty water of the oceans and only 3% is freshwater, most of which is locked up
in the Antarctic ice sheet [31, 32]. Most of it is in icecaps and glaciers (69%) and
groundwater (30%), while all lakes, rivers, and swamps combined only account for
a small fraction (0.3%) of the earth’s total freshwater reserves [33, 34]. The main
source of our daily usage of urban water, either freshwater or groundwater, which is
causing severe water pollution and groundwater strata has been getting lower nearly
10 m within the past few decades, which will take the groundwater to a finite level
in the near future [12, 35]. Simply, the rising massive urbanization globally is creating more demand of freshwater and causing severe contamination of freshwater,
thereby triggering adverse environmental impact which eventually alarms the survival of all living beings on earth. Thus, deurbanization and rural development is an
urgent demand to confirm the global freshwater to be free from pollution in order to
secure clean global water environment. Just because water has distinctive features
that are important for life proliferation to respond in ways that eventually permit
15 Deurbanization and Rural Development
quality improvement, material efficiency, design efficiency, and water efficiency,
the technologies or practices applied in sustainable building essentially require to be
focused, so as to generate a larger amassed impact.
Infrastructure and Transportation
Traditional urban infrastructure is not only causing trillions of dollars every year,
but also playing a viral role in creating adverse environmental and climate perplexity [22, 23]. Thus, deurbanization and rural sustainable infrastructure shall indeed
be a network to provide the “ingredients” for solving the current climatic challenges
[24–26]. The main components of this approach are the roads, highways, bridges,
and tunnels; management of rural development is to be achieved for climate adaptation, less heat stress, more biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as for the more
anthropocentric functions such as increased quality of life through re-creating and
providing shade and shelter in and around rural area which is connected to the cities
[27, 28]. Subsequently, rural infrastructure will serve to provide an ecological
framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surrounding community that would achieve more holistic road, highway, bridge, and tunnel construction and management to run the daily life smoothly in connecting rural areas to
urban areas.
Water
Global environment has been impacted by the urban water cycle by accelerating
evaporation which creates severe water pollution and cooling effect on earth and
climate change [29, 30]. Water covers 75% of the earth’s surface and out of this 97%
is salty water of the oceans and only 3% is freshwater, most of which is locked up
in the Antarctic ice sheet [31, 32]. Most of it is in icecaps and glaciers (69%) and
groundwater (30%), while all lakes, rivers, and swamps combined only account for
a small fraction (0.3%) of the earth’s total freshwater reserves [33, 34]. The main
source of our daily usage of urban water, either freshwater or groundwater, which is
causing severe water pollution and groundwater strata has been getting lower nearly
10 m within the past few decades, which will take the groundwater to a finite level
in the near future [12, 35]. Simply, the rising massive urbanization globally is creating more demand of freshwater and causing severe contamination of freshwater,
thereby triggering adverse environmental impact which eventually alarms the survival of all living beings on earth. Thus, deurbanization and rural development is an
urgent demand to confirm the global freshwater to be free from pollution in order to
secure clean global water environment. Just because water has distinctive features
that are important for life proliferation to respond in ways that eventually permit
15 Deurbanization and Rural Development