Water Sensitive Cities

Today’s urban water managers are faced with an unprecedented set of issues that call for a different approach to urban water management. These include the urgent changes needed to respond to climate change, population growth, growing resource constraints, and rapidly increasing global urbanization. Not only are these issues difficult to address, but they are facing us in an environment that is increasingly unpredictable and complex. Although innovative, new tools are now available to water professionals to address these challenges, solving the water problems of tomorrow cannot be done by the water professionals alone. Instead, the city of the future, whether in the developed or developing world, must integrate water management planning and operations with other city services to meet the needs of humans and the environment in a dramatically superior manner.

Water Sensitive Cities has been developed from selected papers from 2009 Singapore Water Week “Planning for Sustainable Solutions” and also papers taken from other IWA events. It pulls together material that supports the water professionals’ need for useful and up-to-date material.

Authors

• Carol Howe, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands
• Cynthia Mitchell, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Contents
Transitioning to the Water Sensitive City; Towards macroscale assessment of sustainability, A Framework for developing sustainable water utilities, Insights from the Australian Experience, Restorative systems – making the transition, The reality of transdisciplinary decisions- lessons from SWITCH and Sweden.  Water as part of urban design; Living with Water – the Rotterdam experiment, The Blue-Green Network – Lodz’s optimization of the city’s spatial planning, Water – developing an emotional connection to the city.  Sustainability in the city – case studies of cities taking action;  SWITCH – 12 cities moving to the future, Water challenges in building a carbon neutral city in the Middle East –The Masdar perspective, Singapore’s Marina Barage – Changing Mindsets in Urban Solutions, Decentralisation?  Winning the minds of the community;  Water: Nature’s Amazing Reusable Resource, From Zero to Hero: NEWater wins Public confidence in Singapore, Plain speaking about water – experiences from the trenches.

Also available as part of your Water Inteligence Online subscription