Our public infrastructure is required to grow with the demand of the population. This is important to provide the public with health and sanitation, for example. Since we have separated our systems from the natural world, our systems are no longer able to grow organically, and instead need heavy financing and inputs to keep up with our population growth. We are no longer concerned with how well an area can support our growth. Instead we can force the issue; extract and transport resources to our systems from afar, no matter the cost or impact, and continue to degrade our local and distant ecological systems.
Look at Las Vegas for an example of a human ecosystem that is not capable of supporting itself, but yet it has been allowed to grow in population. This would be okay if the natural resources surrounding Las Vegas had existed in the first place or were built up to support the growth, but this is not the case. Reliant on a single source of water from the Lake Mead of Hoover Dam, Las Vegas faces an uncertain future as water levels in Lake Mead reach record lows in recent years. Las Vegas will have to rob resources from a distant ecosystem, degrading that ecology, to satiate its own unsustainable growth. More Reading
On top of this large dams are facing criticism these days and give a false sense of water security. Redundancies are needed in any system, relying on solutions like aqueducts moving water across the western states to feed cities and crop land distracts from alternative solutions that exist outside the current paradigm. More Reading
As a civil engineer, bound by a code of ethics to provide healthy and safe infrastructure to the society, I find it obligatory to begin developing a new framework for land and infrastructure development that works outside the current paradigm.
If public infrastructure was integrated with the surrounding natural environment, then the growth and land development in a given area would be guided in part by the land's ability to organically grow and thrive. Land development practices would follow the ebbs and flows of nature, perhaps zoning would be both proactive and reactive to nature as well. Conservation comes naturally in this scenario, funds could be allocated from existing pools of funding going towards conservation. In addition, an increased value and public perception of natural resources would drive up private interest in regenerative land development.
Growth and prosperity would be tied to the state of the surrounding natural systems. If our natural systems were stewarded and cultivated responsibly, and our infrastructure depended on these natural systems, we would create a unique symbiotic relationship. Natural systems are the most sustainable systems in the world, even man tries to emulate nature in modern design. In moving toward a more sustainable future, there is only one option. Integration with local ecology.