A Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Planning Framework: Lessons from Sanitation Infrastructure Collapse in Cosmo City, Johannesburg

The collapse of sanitation infrastructure has exposed graft deficiencies in urban planning and governance, and service delivery. Rapid urbanization, population growth, and institutional failures have overwhelmed the existing infrastructure systems resulting in service deliveries failures compromising the public health. This paper aims to develop a sustainable urban infrastructure planning framework that addresses these critical yet complex challenges through interrogating the causes of fragmented policy implementation, inadequate design and planning, and lack of community engagement. The paper is grounded in the FIETS (Financial, Institutions, Environment, Technology, and Society) framework, qualitative methodology was employed. Drawing from interviews- with the community, municipal officials, private urban planners- field observations and policy analysis, critical themes like resilience, adaptability, equity, and innovations were extracted. The finding revealed that the integration of community participation, life-cycle management approach, environmental sustainability and application of algorithmic technology can significantly improve the outcomes of infrastructure. The proposed framework offers actionable strategies and scalable models that will transform urban planning practices into more resilient, inclusive and sustainable processes. Ultimately, this will improve the quality of life, public health, and the ecological well-being of the urban communities.