A new pedestrian bridge in the City of Long Beach, CA seeks to incorporate sustainable features in the design, but the application of sustainable infrastructure is still undefined. Existing research in this field focuses on calculating embodied energy or embodied carbon, which evaluates sustainability through a strictly environmental lens. A comparison of these criteria to the goals in the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure's Envision Rating System shows that Envision considers a holistic, system-wide interpretation of sustainable infrastructure. Envision is therefore most applicable for initial high level decision making, such as where to locate the project site or whether to hire local workers for the project, which are societal factors that carbon and energy estimates do not take into account. The ideal project will have an appropriate focus on all impacts of a project to create a balanced design.
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