Urban water management in cities: historical, current and future regimes

Drawing from three phases of a social research programme between 2002 and 2008, this paper proposes a framework for underpinning the development of urban water transitions policy and city-scale benchmarking at the macro scale. Through detailed historical, contemporary and futures research involving Australian cities, a transitions framework is proposed, presenting a typology of six city states, namely the 'Water Supply City', the 'Sewered City', the 'Drained City', the 'Waterways City', the 'Water Cycle City', and the 'Water Sensitive City'. This framework recognises the temporal, ideological and technological contexts that cities transition through when moving towards sustainable urban water conditions. The…