A Native American Perspective on Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure in Southern California

Marta Miletić (), Fatima Shahine, Mahasweta Sarkar and Amy Quandt
Additional contact information
Marta Miletić: Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
Fatima Shahine: Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
Mahasweta Sarkar: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
Amy Quandt: Department of Geography, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-12

Abstract: Although the needs for sustainable urban infrastructure systems are increasingly being recognized and addressed, the same is not true for Native American communities, where existence, condition, and access to a collection of infrastructure systems is often lagging behind urban and non-native communities. To date, there has been a quite limited number of studies exploring Native American perspectives on infrastructure challenges and how to build sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems in their communities. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify the challenges and opportunities for building sustainable infrastructure systems for Native American communities in Southern California and investigate how those communities experience, understand, and apply engineering practice in the context of their community and culture. Drawing from six group interviews, our study highlights challenges and opportunities for building sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems on tribal reservations in San Diego County, California, from the perspectives offered by Native Americans themselves. We focus on infrastructure systems fundamental to well-being: built environment, water/wastewater, telecommunications, transportation, energy, human capital, and education. Our research participants emphasized the importance of their cultures, sovereignty, and care for the welfare of their communities in innovating sustainable and resilient infrastructure. To accomplish this, a key priority should be to train native engineers, who are best positioned to understand the infrastructure needs and opportunities in their own communities.

Keywords: sustainable infrastructure; Native American perspectives; tribal infrastructure; built environment; water/wastewater; telecommunications; transportation; energy; human capital; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/12811/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/12811/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:19:p:12811-:d:935890

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().