Urban water governance

Urban governance is as much about infrastructure as it is about people and processes. In particular, the history of urban governance is closely intertwined with the history of urban water services. Historically, as urban areas became larger and more densely inhabited, the collective need for better water services (drinking water, sanitation and flood protection in particular) became overwhelming. Cities simply could not grow beyond a certain relatively modest size without the simultaneous articulation of an integrated water services infrastructure to replace the piecemeal local arrangements previously in place. This necessarily implied new and more complex governance arrangements, in this case the institutionalisation of water services management in functional departmental structures, linked to political decision-making, finance, quality assurance and related functions. Whilst other papers have presented case studies of the urban hydrosocial transition (UHT) in terms of the physical extension of water services (e.g. water supply, sanitation and surface water management), this chapter focuses specifically on urban governance of water. We argue that the progressive breakdown of Fordist neo-corporatism in water services has opened up the field to a proliferation of ‘glocal’ (to use Swyngedouw’s useful neologism) governance arrangements. Whilst integrated water resource management (IWRM) principles imply a supra-urban scale of governance, the fact that urbanisation brings with it local concentration of water-related impacts means that there is an ineluctable local and urban dimension to water governance. It is therefore not surprising that cities around the world are asserting themselves as central players in water governance. Brief case studies from around the world are presented by way of illustration.

Configuring transformative governance to enhance resilient urban water systems

Political ecological analyses of urban water governance are produced by a broad community of researchers and practitioners with the aim of transforming water-based knowledge into policies, programs, and action. This work is often underpinned by a normative commitment to exposing the uneven effects of socio-environmental change, in the hope of realigning socio-natural interactions for the broader good of human societies and natural environments. In this chapter, we point to three current areas in which political ecological analyses of urban waters provide prominent contributions. First, traditional commitments to Marxist approaches to understanding urban water have evolved into an understanding of water-related territories that extend beyond the confines of the city. Second, the materiality of water and the social relations of science intertwine to direct investment into infrastructures that realise certain visions of urban water over others. Third, urban water governance is increasingly acknowledging and attending to a plurality of water-related worlds, knowledge, and relationships, including those of Indigenous peoples. While urban political ecology may be at a current crossroads in terms of its future application, these examples illustrate how political ecological analyses of water continue to be relevant for understanding urbanisation as an ongoing process that unfolds across space.

This chapter explores the literature on urban water governance to answer the following question: What does the literature on urban water governance tell us about how to understand and address metropolitan water challenges? I address this question through a literature review and content analysis.

This article discusses whether the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst for change in urban water governance in Mexico. We analyse the National Water Commission’s action plan; the private firm Veolia’s use of digital technologies and strategic partnerships in Aguascalientes; and the grassroots activities of the Bajo Tierra Virtual Museum in Queretaro. We argue that the pandemic had no real impact on the first two cases since their initiatives were circumscribed by centralized and market-oriented structures, but constituted an opportunity for Bajo Tierra to gain visibility and recognition to transition towards more adaptive forms of water governance.

Recently, three processes were used to analyze the consequences of plausible climate change scenarios for urban water governance in Lima. The first process, led by a German-financed research team, developed climate change scenarios using innovative tools. The second, Chance2Sustain, brought spatial perspectives to urban development and water governance, mapping spatial inequities in water-related vulnerabilities and including community-based knowledge. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima (MML) initiated the third process, to prepare a city development and Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. This paper examines how these processes of knowledge construction contributed to transitions in water governance and climate change adaptation strategies. Although all processes used concertación (1) in their knowledge construction, the actors and the incorporated knowledge differed considerably. While the first example was dominated by professional groups and technical–professional knowledge, the Chance2Sustain and city processes included a wider range of actors and shifted thinking about adaptive management towards including contextual-embedded knowledge.

Sustainable urban water governance in rapidly transforming cities requires integrative decision-making frameworks capable of balancing social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental resilience. This study develops an Integrative Decision-Making Framework (IDMF) for optimizing urban water policy in Yerevan, Armenia, built upon AI- and GIS-assisted diagnostics and incorporating a Governance Readiness Index (GRI) together with spatial hotspot overlay analysis. The framework employs an AHP–TOPSIS multi-criteria structure to evaluate five policy alternatives—leakage reduction, demand-side management, decentralized reuse, green–blue infrastructure, and data-driven governance—based on normalized quantitative indicators across social, economic, and ecological domains. Results show that Leakage Reduction (A1) and Data-Driven Governance (A5) consistently rank as the top-performing strategies across both baseline and sensitivity scenarios, while equity-prioritized weightings enhance social outcomes without significantly compromising economic performance. The approach also demonstrates robustness under ±10–20% weight variations. Acknowledging limitations related to data availability and expert-based judgments, the study outlines the minimum governance and data-readiness conditions required for transferability. The IDMF thus advances decision-support science in urban water management by integrating governance feasibility with spatial diagnostics and provides adaptable guidance for mid-income cities facing institutional and environmental constraints.

This article concentrates on how hydro-social relations are differentially structured across technical experts engaged within diverse and multiple networks of institutional and bureaucratic practice and the implications this has for more inclusive forms of environmental governance and decision-making. I empirically focus on stormwater governance in Chicago and Los Angeles as a means to capture the range of geographical and institutional variations in environmental knowledge. Both cities face considerably different water resource challenges in the United States but are at the forefront of developing comprehensive and progressive urban water governance programs. In the article, I identify four visions of hydrosocial relations: hydro-reformist, hydro-managerial, hydro-rationalist, and hydro-pragmatist. Each of these represents a particular understanding of how hydrosocial relations should proceed. They all align around shared framings of integrated management and the utilization of the best available science and technology to drive decision-making. Consensus, however, masks fundamental differences among the varying groups of expertise. Differences center on the perceived effectiveness of different types of infrastructural interventions, of market and economic incentives, and the role of new institutions and rules to govern stormwater. I argue that each frame looks to structure hydrosocial relations to fit their own vision but consequently offer apolitical strategies that reduce water quality and quantity problems to their technical and hydrological components.

Urban water supply systems provide water for a range of water uses from human consumption to fire control, and from garden irrigation to industrial processes. The amount of water consumed in an urban area depends on the activities. Therefore, urban water use is categorised into different sectors such as residential, non-residential and unmetered water use. Modeling urban water use has significant importance in water resources planning and management. From the literature, a vast amount of research was found on modeling residential water use. However, a significant portion (e.g. around 30% of total water use in Melbourne, Australia) of urban water use belongs to non-residential, and limited attention has been given to modelling non-residential urban water use, possibly due to the difficulty of data collection at end-use level. However, billing data are now available in monthly and quarterly time steps with the latter being widely available. Such data can be utilized to build models for predicting non-residential water use. Therefore, this study aims to develop non-residential water demand models by identifying unique groups based on their homogeneous nature of water use and then further disaggregated into different sub-groups based on their volumes of water uses. Quarterly billing data from 2000 to 2011 were obtained within the Yarra Valley Water (YVW) service area for 46,000 non-residential customers. Of them, monthly water use data available only for 100 customers. Therefore, comparative study of quarterly and monthly time step modeling was carried out by developing a regression model to predict non-residential urban water use in two schools within YVW service area and is presented in this paper. Monthly water use data from 2005 to 2011 were used for this study as water usage patterns are significantly different in pre and post 2005 due in part to permanent water saving rules, which was introduced in 2005. Monthly data were accumulated into quarterly data for developing the quarterly model. Past water use, dummy variables for fixed quarterly effects, incidence of water restrictions, total rainfall and mean monthly maximum daily temperature were considered as influential variables. Although there were five levels of restrictions during this period, due to insufficient data points for some of the restriction levels, all types of restrictions were considered as a single level of restriction. Model performance was measured using Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (E) and relative error values. Model calibration and validation were performed using two independent data sets by splitting the total record into two periods. Two sets of calibration periods: 2006-2009 and 2006-2010 and validation periods: 2010-2011 and 2011 were also tested to find the best period for model development and validating the models. It was found that the models developed with 2006-2010 calibration period have given better results for both of the schools. Although, both of the monthly and the quarterly time step models were found to predict well, quarterly model performed slightly better than the monthly model with less relative error and good E value. The 20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2013) was held at the Adelaide Convention Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, from 1 to 6 December 2013. It was held jointly with the 22nd National Conference of the Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR 2013) and the DSTO led Defence Operations Research Symposium (DORS 2013). The theme for this event was Adapting to Change: the multiple roles of modelling.

This book examines the role played by business in urban water governance by analyzing the evolution of the global private water sector along with four public-private partnerships in Mexico and the U.S. The local nature of water services often hides the global developments behind the rise of transnational water corporations, which have gone from being local operators to becoming dynamic and powerful actors within an interconnected transnational space for water. This book focuses on the French groups Veolia and Suez, two of the most prominent private actors in global water governance, and the development and adaptation strategies of both companies in the cities of Aguascalientes, Mexico City, Atlanta, and Milwaukee over the past 30 years. Drawing on over 100 interviews conducted with corporate executives, public authorities, and local users of water services, this book moves beyond the simplistic dichotomy of the public-private debate and develops a theoretical framework that analyzes the economic and political power wielded by transnational business actors in global water governance. Not only does the book explain how Veolia and Suez strategically mobilize resources at difference scales in order to expand their global operations, but it also provides a nuanced picture of how state regulation remains of central importance to understanding the dynamics and evolution of the global water sector. Students and scholars interested in business and the environment, including public-private partnerships, business management and transnational corporations, and water governance, will find this book of great interest as will professionals and policymakers working in these fields.

This paper is a case study of the limitations to urban climate resilience of the city region of Udon Thani province in Thailand which is rapidly growing and aims to become a regional hub despite being confronted with climate-related challenges such as drought and flood. The research focuses on the formal institutional factors which are obstacles to mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban management and thus exacerbate Udon Thani’s vulnerability to drought and flood. The research examines plans and policies of land use and water supply services at national, regional, and local levels regarding the provincial development strategy and the spatial coordination of public agencies at the same level of governance in order to examine the vertical and horizontal institutional arrangement, legal framework, policy drivers, and other limitations to the mainstreaming of climate resilience into urban development planning. Interviews were also held with relevant public officials and practitioners. The findings reveal that there are limitations caused by formal institutional arrangements and gaps which have resulted in the lack of coordination between agencies at different levels or administration or agencies operating under different ministries. There are also discrepancies of responsibility and information and financial resources which significantly undermine the efficiency of the two urban services, and, consequently, Udon Thani city region’s climate resilience and ability to accommodate spatial and socioeconomic growth.

Water markets are used in a wide variety of contexts to (a) increase access to water, and (b) increase water use efficiency by reallocating water to uses with a higher economic value. The global prevalence of water markets may help or hinder achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6, making it essential to understand their role in water management. However, an overarching understanding of what water markets are and how they work across different regulatory and geographic contexts is surprisingly elusive. The literature separates water markets based on their formality and the nature of the goods and services being sold (typically either domestic water or agricultural), but growing water scarcity and increasing urban water demands means that agricultural and urban water use can no longer be considered separately. This review brings together two disparate strands of literature on water markets: (a) markets as a tool for re‐allocation between agricultural uses (including both water rights and irrigation services), and (b) urban water markets to expand access to safe water supplies. Based on a review of 148 studies of water markets, this article explores the similarities and differences between urban and agricultural markets across the spectrum of regulatory formality to identify key findings in water market operation and outcomes, including critiques of market function. Bringing together the work on urban and agricultural water markets highlights important lessons on the role water markets can play in achieving SDG 6.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of Water

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Rivers carry large amounts of freshwater and terrestrial material into shelf seas, which is an important part of the global water and biogeochemical cycles. The earth system model or climate model is an important instrument for simulating and projecting the global water cycle and climate change, in which tides however are commonly removed. For a better understanding of the potential effect of the absence of tides in the simulation of the water cycle, this study compared the results of a regional model with and without considering tides, and evaluated the effect of tides on the behavior of three major rivers (i.e., the Yellow, Yalujiang, and Changjiang rivers) water in the eastern shelf seas of China from the perspectives of transport pathways, timescales, and water concentration. The results showed that the tides induced more dispersed transport for the water of the Yellow and Yalujiang rivers, but more concentrated transport for the Changjiang River water. The effect of tides on the transit areas of the Yellow, Yalujiang, and Changjiang rivers was 13 %, 40 %, and 21 %, respectively. The annual mean water age and transit time of the three rivers in the model with tides were several (<span class="inline-formula">∼</span> 2–10) times higher than those in the no-tide model, suggesting that tides dramatically slow the river water transport and export rate over the shelf. By slowing the river water export, tides induced a three-fold increase in river water concentration and a decrease in shelf seawater salinity by <span class="inline-formula"><i>&gt;</i></span> 1. Moreover, the effect of tides on river behavior was stronger in relatively enclosed seas (i.e., the Bohai and Yellow seas) than in relatively open seas (i.e., the East China Sea). The change in the shelf currents induced by tides is the main cause of the difference in the river water behavior between the two model runs. Tides can increase bottom stress and thus weaken shelf currents and decrease the water transport timescales. The improvement in tidal parameterization in the no-tide model in the simulation of river water behavior was very limited. Given the important role of river runoff on the global water cycle and the effect of changes in river water behavior on ocean carbon cycling, it is important to include the tidal effect in earth system models to improve their projection accuracy.

This study addresses the compound risks of drought and water quality deterioration faced by urban water supply systems under climate change. A dynamic allocation model integrating water quantity and quality indicators was developed to enhance adaptive management. The model incorporates an expanded water deficit index (WDI) and a Water Quality Index (WQI) within a fuzzy logic-based decision framework. Through a quality-weighting adjustment mechanism, the model dynamically reallocates surface water, groundwater, reclaimed water (RW), and interregional support water according to real-time hydrological and quality conditions. Using Taichung City, Taiwan, as a case study, results show that the proposed model improves overall supply resilience by 9.6% while maintaining system stability and safeguarding health under variable drought and water quality conditions. The findings demonstrate that integrating dual indicators within a fuzzy inference system provides a practical and scalable approach for adaptive, health-conscious, and climate-resilient urban water governance.

Research on urban service delivery strategies lacks a multilevel approach able to account for the influence of authority structures on effective reform. A comparative analysis of efforts to increase recycled wastewater production in the United States (specifically California) and Australia is used to evaluate the effectiveness of centralized and decentralized urban governance systems in reform efforts and, more importantly, the institutional and political mechanisms underlying these differences. The results show that Australia, with a more centralized system, has more effectively set and implemented an urban water governance agenda that includes recycled urban wastewater. However, in both places local resistance has been a barrier to effective change. These findings demonstrate that reform capacity and policy success may differ between governance systems while common barriers and political dynamics persist.