Australian Water Management Review Vol. 1 2014 | Page 52

The state of the water sensitive city

P

rogress towards achieving what we now
call a water sensitive city began (at least
in Australia) in the early 1990s with the
introduction of water sensitive urban
design, initially through initiatives to
improve the quality of urban stormwater for
protection of receiving waters. Since then, water
sensitive urban design has progressively evolved,
as researchers and practitioners all over the world
adapt the broad concepts to different challenges
associated with environmental degradation of
waterways, droughts and floods. The concept is
fundamentally one of integration of urban water
management practices across the water cycle,
with the physical delivery of such initiatives
through urban design. Water sensitive urban
design encapsulates urban waterscapes (a popular
landscape design practice using water as a key
design element) but with a much stronger emphasis
on ecological functions of such waterscapes.
The introduction of such concepts as cities as a
catchment and water sensitive cities in the mid2000s cemented the notion that water sensitive
urban design is the process and water sensitive
cities are the outcomes.
A number of cities have made astounding progress
in transforming the way they manage and consume
water at a city-scale. Today, many cities display
attributes of a water sensitive city, but there is
no one city that has truly pulled all the strands
together. The delivery of a water sensitive city is
really the result of an integrated social and technical
effort, where technology and institutions align to
drive change. The cities that are currently lauded
as the closest to becoming truly water sensitive
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are those who have implemented great technical
solutions but remain lagging in reforms to fully
embed water sensitivity into institutions and society.
While application of new technologies is a critical
component, that alone will not be sufficient.
In 2009, we postulated that there are three pillars of
a water sensitive city. Firstly, it is a city that functions
as one of its water supply catchments – it has access
to a variety of different water sources, including
from its stormwater and sewerage systems, that
are supplied at range of different scales (from large
centralised treatment plants for drinking water to
localised treatment and storage facilities that provide
stormwater for non-potable uses).
Secondly, it is a city that provides ecosystem services
to the built and natural environments (such as
maintaining or improving air and water quality in the
city), which in turn support the wellbeing of people.
Finally, it is a city comprised of water sensitive
communities, meaning that there is socio-political
capital for sustainability and water sensitivity. The
governance structure, institutions, and citizens’
decision-making and behaviour are holistic from
a water cycle perspective and are sensitive to the
ecological challenges of maintaining a sustainable
balance between meeting the needs of the built and
the natural (water) environments. It is this third
pillar of water sensitivity that remains largely elusive
for cities.
Singapore is regarded as highly progressive in this
space, and is often referenced as the one of the
world’s leading water sensitive cities. In Singapore,
water security is national security. Singaporean
authorities have clear incentives to ensure a secure

and predominantly locally-sourced water supply,
and as such it has long been working towards
the first pillar of water sensitivity – becoming its
own water supply catchment. Initially, the focus of
government investment was developing Singapore’s
highly successful wastewater recycling program.
Spurred on by this achievement, Singapore’s Public
Utilities Board became receptive to advancing
stormwater harvesting projects within the region.
Due to the hard work of the Public Utilities Board,
Singapore’s stormwater harvesting program is
progressing towards meeting its full potential, and
the city could realise the goal of becoming more
self-reliant in terms of its water supply. However,
the full potential of urban stormwater in delivering
multiple ecosystem benefits (beyond being a source
of water) can only be realised with diffuse solutions.
Singapore has yet to fully embrace this aspect of
a water sensitive city in spite of some very iconic
projects designed to raise community awareness
and connection with the waterways of Singapore. To
fully realise this potential a whole-of-government
effort is required, and this has yet to be fully
developed. With the exception of the Public Utilities
Board, many departments and agencies in Singapore
have either displayed high levels of institutional
inertia or remain largely uncoordinated in their water
sensitive cities efforts.
Institutional inertia is a common phenomenon
that we see in many developed cities, and it is
not unique to Singapore. Without institutional
integration to deliver a common good, progress can
easily be dampened, and outmoded frameworks –
those that perpetuate path dependence and lock-in
in decision-making on infrastructure investment –