3.4 Analysis
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Fig. 3.25 Luxury apartments on the beach front at Umhlanga Rocks
can also invest huge sums of money in these infrastructure types. Such investments finance green infrastructures, with the argument that they are necessary to
sustain economic growth and improve living standards (Chen and Warren 2011). It
is here where green and ecological infrastructures can attain the target of economic
prosperity (Roe and Mell 2013).
Not only do green and ecological infrastructures perform economic functions,
but the normative arguments linked to this ontology state that governments and business must invest their financial resources in these infrastructure types, in order to
realise their social, environmental and economic functions. We see this happening
with eThekwini’s proposed water fund and the CSR initiative of the River Horse
project. Within the view of liberal institutionalism, municipal officials hold an epistemological and ontological view on green and ecological infrastructures, which
commodifies nature. Epistemologically, these infrastructure types perform certain