Co-financing green resilient infrastructures in Copenhagen: integrated or superficial design?

Green resilient infrastructures can provide important benefits for urban design. However, there are challenges associated with securing the necessary funding and, even where viable funding models have been established, there is evidence that these can reinforce superficial approaches to design. The aim of this paper is to investigate new models of financing green resilient infrastructures in terms of their socio-spatial implications. It provides a case study of the ‘co-financing’ system established in Copenhagen to realise the city’s plans for ‘blue-green’ stormwater management. It highlights limitations to this system including that it requires identifying a discrete ‘design dimension’ of stormwater projects. This embeds an understanding of design as an additional layer which is vulnerable to being discarded in financially constrained circumstances. The paper’s contributions are its analysis of the limitations of existing models of financing green resilient infrastructures and its identification of the need for new funding models to facilitate more integrated design.