scholarly journals Understanding urban water performance at the city-region scale using an urban water metabolism evaluation framework

2018 ◽  
Vol 137 ◽  
pp. 395-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marguerite A. Renouf ◽  
Steven J. Kenway ◽  
Ka Leung Lam ◽  
Tony Weber ◽  
Estelle Roux ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Vol 117 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ffion Atkins ◽  
Tyrel Flügel ◽  
Rui Hugman

To improve its resilience to increasing climatic uncertainty, the City of Cape Town (the City) aims to become a water sensitive city by 2040. To undertake this challenge, a means to measure progress is needed that quantifies the urban water systems at a scale that enables a whole-of-system approach to water management. Using an urban water metabolism framework, we (1) provide a first city-scale quantification of the urban water cycle integrating its natural and anthropogenic flows, and (2) assess alternative water sources (indicated in the New Water Programme) and whether they support the City towards becoming water sensitive. We employ a spatially explicit method with particular consideration to apply this analysis to other African or Global South cities. At the time of study, centralised potable water demand by the City amounted to 325 gigalitres per annum, 99% of which was supplied externally from surface storage, and the remaining ~1% internally from groundwater storage (Atlantis aquifer). Within the City’s boundary, runoff, wastewater effluent and groundwater represent significant internal resources which could, in theory, improve supply efficiency and internalisation as well as hydrological performance. For the practical use of alternative resources throughout the urban landscape, spatially explicit insight is required regarding the seasonality of runoff, local groundwater storage capacity and the quality of water as it is conveyed through the complex urban landscape. We suggest further research to develop metrics of urban water resilience and equity, both of which are important in a Global South context.


Resources ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruchira Ghosh ◽  
Arun Kansal ◽  
G Venkatesh

Water is a non substitutable resource and a social good, which governments must perforce provide to its citizens in the right quantity and quality. An integrated urban metabolism model is useful in understanding the status quo of an urban water and sanitation system. By defining and measuring the values of relevant hydrological performance indicators—deliverables of the model referred to—a thorough knowledge of the present performance and the gaps, which need to be plugged en route to a sustainable urban water infrastructure, can be obtained, as demonstrated in this paper. This then forms the bedrock for decision-making and policy formulation for change to be introduced top-down as well as advice, which would enable the much needed bottom-up support to policies. The authors have chosen Delhi as the case study city, but would like to point out that this application can be reproduced for any other town/city/region of the world. The water balance within the chosen system boundaries shows that the annual unutilized flows, amounting to 1443 million cubic meters, dominate the metabolic flows of water in Delhi, and the annual groundwater withdrawal, which exceeds 420 million cubic meters, is much greater than the recharge rate, resulting in a rapid depletion of the groundwater level. There is an urgent need thereby to improve the rate of infiltration of stormwater and reduce the rate of runoff by focusing on increasing the share of permeable surfaces in the city, as well as to consider the wastewater streams as potential sources of water, while not forgetting demand side of management measures, as the pressure on the urban water system in the city is likely to intensify with a combination of population growth, economic development, and climate change in the near future. The recommendations provided by the authors towards the end of the article, can, if suitable measures are undertaken and robust policies are implemented, result in Delhi’s enjoying a water surplus in the short term, and progressively attain complete sustainability with regard to the utilization of its water resources.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 565-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beel ◽  
Martin Jones ◽  
Ian Rees Jones ◽  
Warren Escadale

This ‘in perspective’ piece addresses the (re-)positioning of civil society within new structures of city-region governance within Greater Manchester. This follows on from the processes of devolution, which have given the Greater Manchester City-Region a number of new powers. UK devolution, to date, has been largely focused upon engendering agglomerated economic growth at the city-region scale. Within Greater Manchester City-Region, devolution for economic development has sat alongside the devolution of health and social care (unlike any other city-region in the UK) as well. Based on stakeholder mapping and semi-structured interviews with key actors operating across the Greater Manchester City-Region, the paper illustrates how this has created a number of significant tensions and opportunities for civil society actors, as they have sought to contest a shifting governance framework. The paper, therefore, calls for future research to carefully consider how civil society groups are grappling with devolution; both contesting and responding to devolution. This is timely given the shifting policy and political discourse towards the need to deliver more socially inclusive city-regions.


2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 2127-2154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsy Donald

In this paper I explore the key elements of the mode of regulation operating at the urban scale in Toronto's postwar period to learn what it was that inspired an entire generation of scholars to call Toronto the ‘city that works' in this period. Despite the significant amount of literature discussing the general character of regulation operating at the city-region scale in the Fordist or managerial period of urban development, it is argued that surprisingly little empirical research has actually documented what allegedly made these Fordist metropolitan regions ‘work‘. Drawing on archival research in addition to insights from Canadian applied regulation theory and from an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism, I argue that, although Toronto did develop within the context of a Fordist regime of accumulation, the particular elements of the mode of regulation it developed at the urban scale were distinctive and important in providing the conditions underlying the economic success of the region. Toronto may have benefited disproportionately from national regulatory policies. However, its economic dynamism also constituted one of the cornerstones of the nation's economic and social viability. Further, its more localized regulatory structures and social context had a specific institutional and cultural richness, which, in concert with its highly developed economic structure, served to stave off many of the crisis tendencies being felt by other industrial regions in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the principal and unique institutional innovations was the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto (’Metro'), which can be regarded as a key (although hitherto underemphasized) component of the Canadian Fordist regime of accumulation. More than just a conduit through which nationally driven Keynesian welfare programs were delivered, Metro was also an innovator of unique urban-based postwar development policies. I conclude by demonstrating what this story of postwar Toronto can tell us more generally about urban government and governance under Fordism, and about the managerial paradigm and the regulation approach.


2003 ◽  
Vol 45 (First Serie (1) ◽  
pp. 128-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Docherty ◽  
David Begg

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Philip Harrison

Abstract The bulk of the scholarly literature on city-regions and their governance is drawn from contexts where economic and political systems have been stable over an extended period. However, many parts of the world, including all countries in the BRICS, have experienced far-reaching national transformations in the recent past in economic and/or political systems. The national transitions are complex, with a mix of continuity and rupture, while their translation into the scale of the city-region is often indirect. But, these transitions have been significant for the city-region, providing a period of opportunity and institutional fluidity. Studies of the BRICS show that outcomes of transitions are varied but that there are junctures of productive comparison including the ways in which the nature of the transitions create new path dependencies, and way in which interests across territorial scales soon consolidate, producing new rigidities in city-region governance.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802097265
Author(s):  
Matthew Thompson ◽  
Alan Southern ◽  
Helen Heap

This article revisits debates on the contribution of the social economy to urban economic development, specifically focusing on the scale of the city region. It presents a novel tripartite definition – empirical, essentialist, holistic – as a useful frame for future research into urban social economies. Findings from an in-depth case study of the scale, scope and value of the Liverpool City Region’s social economy are presented through this framing. This research suggests that the social economy has the potential to build a workable alternative to neoliberal economic development if given sufficient tailored institutional support and if seen as a holistic integrated city-regional system, with anchor institutions and community anchor organisations playing key roles.


Author(s):  
Liuqing Yang ◽  
Wen Chen ◽  
Fulong Wu ◽  
Yi Li ◽  
Wei Sun
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Athanasios Thanos Giannopoulos

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the assessment of future applications of CASE (Co-operative, Autonomous, Shared, and Electric) mobility—a term that is also taken to include the more traditionally known applications of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). It sets the objective of making such assessments more holistic and horizontal in nature because future CASE mobility applications will include many technologies and service concepts as an integrated whole serving specific mobility objective. Traditional evaluation methodologies will therefore have to be modified to account for this situation, and to this end, the paper focuses on assessing and adapting such “traditional” methodologies. It draws from the experience gained in Greece in the last decade when a substantial number of ITS applications were implemented and assessed, especially in the second largest urban area of the country, the city of Thessaloniki (part of the EU’s European Network of Living Labs). Four basic methodologies are selected: the use of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), focused interviews, the CMME (CASE Mobility Matrix Evaluation), and the use of safety audits before and after the CASE mobility application. For the first three, the paper suggests specific indicators and/or content. It also gives an example of the use of CMME based on a use case from Thessaloniki. The contents and recommendations of this paper provide a better understanding of the emerging situation as regards CASE mobility applications and point to the need for establishing a timely and comprehensive CASE mobility evaluation framework at both national and European levels, for future implementations.


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