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Deconstructing water sensitivity: experiences from global cities

Cities around the world today are facing common issues of rapid urbanization, varying climatic conditions, and challenging economies, which are known to impact the environment and quality of life. In response, multiple concepts have emerged related to water management practices over the past few decades. One such recently discussed concept is of Water Sensitive Cities, which envisions a place that judiciously uses its existing resources, building resilience for tomorrow by simultaneously ensuring community participation for sustainability. Synonymous with this notion, there exist other overlapping concepts such as Water Sensitive Urban Design, Low Impact Development, Best Management Practices, Green Infrastructure, and the like. This research intends to deconstruct these concepts and their practices through a review of 120 case studies located across different agro-climatic and water-stressed regions globally. These cases were analyzed for their inclination to three thematic components: society, water sensitive urbanism, and technologies. The evidence suggests that there is not a single water sensitive city in the world today. This paper discusses the Utopian nature of this notion and identifies relevant pathways to explore to reach the destined vision of Water Sensitive Cities.


Introduction
The term "Water Sensitive Cities" was first coined by Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC), established in July 2012. It was a consequence of water crisis in the region where bulk of the water supply came from various desalination plants installed. While most Australian cities have witnessed drought in the past, a major contributing factor in their water crisis was surplus supply of water, which was a result of lifestyle pattern. The Australians have mere preference for suburban detached dwellings, which they were willing to pay higher prices, with its own set of hydrological constraints. Along with this, the increased dependency on desalination caused tremendous amount of cost and carbon emissions. These cultural water issues were posed upon with more threshold due to -(a) rapidly growing population with changing lifestyles; (b) changing and highly variable climate and; (c) a challenging economic environment [1,2]. However, it is revealed that rather than advanced technology that highly depends on elevated energy consumptions, simple solutions like water pricing and education campaigns are more effective. Water Sensitive Cities envisions cities which are sustainable, resilient, productive, and livable. Interestingly, these issues stand true for all fast-growing urban areas in the world and therefore, the concept cannot be restricted to Australian cities alone [1,2] 2. Conceptualizing Water Sensitive Cities IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 592 (2020) 012012 IOP Publishing doi: 10.1088/1755-1315/592/1/012012 3 consider the flows of water resources into, through, and out of urban settlements, where the concept of Urban Metabolism actually emerges. According to Renouf, et al [6], Urban Metabolism is defined as, "the process of resources flowing through and being transformed and consumed in urban areas to sustain all the technical and socio-economic processes that occur within in it". This definition could be crucial and much relevant for taking informed decisions regarding urban and regional planning.
Urban metabolism forms the umbrella term which refers to the amount and flows of water, energy, and materials entering and leaving an administrative boundary, and constitutes the other two terms i.e., urban water metabolism and water mass balance. Urban water metabolism can be defined as the trajectories and magnitudes of flows of energy and nutrients that are created in the process of water treatment or pumping, whereas water mass balance can be defined as only stocks and flows of water, excluding any energy or nutrient efficiency considerations. These concepts take into account natural flows (precipitation, evapotranspiration, groundwater infiltration, and stormwater runoff) along with anthropogenic flows (centralized water supplies, decentralized water supplies, and wastewater discharged or recycled). This foundational conceptualization forms the Urban Metabolism Evaluation Framework which essentially quantifies and tracks the flows to understand the impacts of implementation of water sensitive practices. The evaluation informs about the status of local water supplies and their vulnerability extent to external and internal stresses [6]. However, water sensitive city is actually a stage which a city acquires based on its service delivery functions and possibly a result of certain quantification and evaluation. Typically for this, a city goes through the following stages, which includes, water supply city when cities have access to water supply and security, sewered city when cities have public health protection, drained city when cities have flood protection system, waterways city when cities treat water as a social amenity and for environmental protection, water cycle city when cities limit its dependency of natural resources, and ultimately water sensitive city when cities have intergenerational equity and resilience to climate change. This is not necessarily a linear process and various stages of it can be achieved through leapfrogging with proper formulation of plans. The linearity or leapfrogging function highly depends on the status of a country; the functionality differs majorly in developing and developed countries, which will be further discussed [5,7].

Concepts Synonymous to Water Sensitive Cities
Although pitched forward as an ideal city, the first time when 'Water Sensitive Cities' as a concept was introduced, it did not seem very alien. There have been various terminologies similar to water sensitive cities, especially relating to urban drainage. Today, cities facing major challenges of climate change and growing population due to industrialization and urbanization require stakeholder coordination, institutional support, and community engagement. This, as a result has given rise to various evolving paradigms which encourage integrated management of water resources in water systems, not only technically but also institutionally and socially. Various paradigms have emerged and evolved, having a common vision to deal with complex urban water challenges, without disturbing the existing habitats. Some of the common identified stresses faced by urban areas, which gave way to emergence of these paradigms include, climate change, growing demand and urbanization, aged infrastructure, depleted polluted resources, and increased frequency of disruptive events. As a consequence, major challenges increased vulnerability of water systems to uncertainty. Various innovative concepts to combat these causes started emerging in the late 19th century and have been evolving ever since. Chronologically, the concepts of Modern Infrastructural Ideal (MII), Integrated Water Resource Management (IRWM), Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM), Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) including Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUDS), Green Infrastructure (GI), Low Impact Development (LID), Best Management Practices (BMP), Water Sensitive Cities, Water Wise Cities are the merging concepts that have emerged in the past few decades [8,9].
There has been a shift from traditional systems which only prioritized public provision and safety to a more multifunctional wastewater management which integrates with the water cycle. The former systems lead to climate change due to increased energy and resource consumption, while the latter is attempting to mitigate along with urban heat island, water quality, and recreation. The old systems also lead to pollution by urban runoff, loss of nutrients, high maintenance costs, and low flexibility. This forms the baseline rationale for these emerging concepts essentially related to urban drainage. However, there are various concepts which have come and have similar approaches, but have used different terminologies. This is because these jargons have developed rather informally driven by local and contextual understandings at different timelines and hence differ in different parts of the world. It has also been often observed that despite the emergence of a concept with a particular terminology in a particular part of the world, when applied to a different region changes, its contextual understanding and application fit the local context [8,9].
A major difference is observed in global north and global south cities. For developing countries, these new systems are a way to tackle their survivability concerns, whereas for developed countries, it is a way to tackle their environmental concerns. As the alternatives discussing integration of decentralized systems into existing centralized systems have emerged in the north, it becomes important for the global south cities to adapt to local context by bottom up approach. In the various phases of cities as mentioned earlier, the northern cities have already achieved the status of water supply city, sewered city, and drained city. Therefore, for them, a linear procession is a possible scenario. Meanwhile, the southern cities are still struggling with the status of water supply city and sewered city, which is the most basic provision of infrastructure services. Thus, for these cities, a systematic leapfrogging approach could be a more preferred scenario. These concepts have emerged in the global north, where the first three stages of city have already been procured. At the same time, for the global south cities, these concepts form a pillar towards sustainable systems which cannot be achieved by following the conventional systems of the industrialized world [8].
The challenges that these two parts of the world face are also different than one another. The developing countries come across multiple barriers pertaining to social, institutional, technological, and economic contexts. These essentially include resistance to change, poverty and marginalization, fragmented responsibilities, lack of institutional capacity and legislative mandate, insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, uncertainties in performance and cost of potential solutions, and lack of funding and effective market incentives. So, in such a scenario, the developing countries could reflect on the mistakes done by developed countries in the past and directly opt for more sustainable and efficient technological innovations [5,8].
As mentioned previously, these integrated practices bloomed essentially in the late 19th century. These concepts have been popularized under the terminologies IUWM, WSUD, LID, BMP, GI, SUDS and others, which have similar understanding on a broader scale, but differ in terms of its focus and place of origin. For instance, the term Low Impact Development (LID) emerged in North America and New Zealand in 1977 with an original intent of having natural hydrology through site layout plan and integrated control measures characterized by minimization of impervious services. However, in late 1990s, the focus shifted to stormwater treatment practices and later to stormwater management. Also, the term sheds more focus on 'low impact' and does not contain 'water', which allows for further interpretation from a multi-disciplinary approach. Water Sensitive Urban Design which originated in Australia in 1990s focused on managing water balance, enhancing water quality, encouraging water conservation and water related recreation. It was a rather philosophical approach to urban planning and design. Further, stormwater management was posed to be a subset of WSUD in its practices with its focus swiftly shifting to stormwater. WSUD is now widely used synonymous to water sensitive cities and has observed increased applications in New Zealand and UK. IUWM when first commonly used in 1990s focused mainly on urban drainage management, which now is being closely linked to WSUD and LID, beyond drainage management. Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDs) which originated in UK around 1980s focusses on controlling urban runoff, which further added its focus on natural predevelopment site drainage and also improving water quality. The Best Management Practices (BMPs) which originated in North America around 1970s focuses on restoring more favorable plant cover and soil structure through non-structural measures which further evolved to reduction in pollution prevention in stormwater discharge. Green Infrastructure (GI) originated in the USA around 1990s had it original focus of network of green spaces but further tapped into its potential of ecological services of stormwater management such green roofs, permeable pavement, raingardens etc. [9].
The important question arises: where does Water Sensitive Cities fit in each of these concepts? The essential difference here is, a water sensitive city is the destination intended to reach through these processes under various jargons for integrated water management. They form the essential building blocks of water sensitive cities, exhibiting values of environmental protection, equity, rehabilitation and sustainability with essential water services, including supply security, flood control, and public health, but also additional benefits such as food security, energy savings, amenity and resilience of cities to climate change [5]. The focus here is on the practices that bring the concept of "fit-for-purpose" water systems forth, where water from various sources is treated based on the quality required at end use, incorporating "non-traditional" (or alternative) sources of water. The ultimate goal is to integrate alternative, decentralized systems into the existing centralized infrastructural solutions, reducing the sole dependence on large, capital-intensive network infrastructure while allowing for added flexibility [8,9].

Water Sensitive Practices for Sustainable Water Management
Water sensitive practices are a combination of an overlap between governance, design and technology. After establishing a conceptual understanding of water sensitive cities by closely linking it to integrated water management innovations, it is essential to know what implementation solution helps us to achieve the respective objectives. None of these methods give us the best solution, rather the contextual combination of them would enable the cities to arrive at the stage of water sensitivity city. It is crucial that selection of each of these methods for implementation is done in response to the local set up or else could be met with various resistances of the local barriers.
To breakdown these practices, they have been categorized into Society and Governance; and Design and Technology. Society and Governance mainly identifies roles of various stakeholders in the system which includes regulations to keep the system in place. Following are some of the identified ways in which could be achieved through function of policy norms, participatory planning and design, monitoring systems, and creation of public spaces. The basic idea is to involve various stakeholders and generate a sense of ownership and belonging among people. Meanwhile, Technology and Design identifies various sustainable design and innovative technologies which primarily intends to move towards more natural hydrology and landscapes. They could further be categorized into Stormwater: Treatment, Storage, and Use; and Wastewater: Treatment and Re-use. Under Stormwater: Treatment, Storage, and Use, the practices comprise rainwater harvesting, bio-retention, biotopes, sand-gravel filter, rooftop retention, permeable paving, infiltration trenches, geo cellular systems, swales, detention ponds, and evapotranspiration mechanisms. For Wastewater: Treatment and Re-use, decentralized wastewater management is often considered more sustainable due to its longevity, resilience, and reduction in cost and resources for implementation and maintenance. These are usually characterized by on-site systems where it gets treated on site and returns back to the ecosystem. However, there are limitations in terms of soil percolating capacities which varies from site to site. There are various sustainable options of centralized and combination of centralized and decentralized, although they are accompanied by a set of limitations. The decentralized systems include DEWATS, constructed wetlands, soil bio technology, soil scape filter technology, eco sanitation, fecal sludge management, and various others. Variations of aforementioned technologies can be used with different components which can be used for breaking down of organic and inorganic components in wastewater such as bio sanitizer, green bridge technology, bio remediation to name a few.
The combination of Centralized and Decentralized Systems is highly advocated by water sensitive cities and depends on the priority of use. A densely populated region prefers a centralized system due its high purification and less cumbersome operation. On the other hand, decentralized systems are preferred for its environmental and expenditure concerns with reduction in cost and resources. In some cases, however, a combination of these approaches offers an optimal solution. It is eventually a balancing act between engineering and environmental solutions. Some of these solutions include Septic

Evaluating Water Sensitivity
Since water sensitive city is a state that a city arrives at, it is essential to evaluate the progress of implementation strategies practiced by respective cities. This could be done either qualitatively or quantitatively, or both simultaneously. One such official way is through water sensitive index, which intends to benchmark and rank cities, in terms of performance, targets and management responses for policy makers, service providers, and intercity learning. It emerged by citing issues and shortcomings of the existing monitoring systems which had narrow focus of indicators, failed to address needs of policy and decision makers, had spatial mismatch between administrative boundaries and flow of resources, limited data availability and disconnect between data collection and reporting. Water Sensitive Index attempts to provide a communication tool for describing key attributes of a water sensitive city; articulates and shares set of goals or benchmarks of a WSC for evaluating its performance, measuring the progress, assisting decision makers and accountability. This includes 7 thematic goals constituting 34 indicators distributed across sustainability, urban design, vulnerability, and governance. Each of the indicators is then scored qualitatively and quantitatively on a 5-point scale [10]. However, this requires detailed information of each of the project and also requires performance monitoring postproject implementation.
For a broader understanding, the projects could be analyzed qualitatively which would provide a fair idea of project performance. One way of doing it could be through rating the project based on how many objectives it is fulfilling with respect to a constant set of objectives. This would give a comparative idea of which projects fulfilled maximum number of objectives, and which objectives are fulfilled the most and to what extent. Other way of evaluating could be in terms of overlaying contextual geographical information with the location of projects, and understanding if the projects are catering to its local conditions or not. Other qualitative ways of evaluation could be in terms of its scalability by looking at the scale of implementation and hence scale of impact. There are other ways of evaluating a project in terms of its efficiency in its project management timeline or even its project finance approach. This, however, doesn't stand relevant while talking about the performance of project pertaining to water sensitivity. These are some simplified ways in which water sensitivity of a place could be evaluated in terms of project implementation.

Methodology
Despite the initial evolution of concepts revolving around water sensitive practices since late 19th century, there is not one single example of a 'water sensitive city' in the world. This makes us question the whole concept and its utopian nature, as they call it the ideal city. The conceptual literature paints a scenario of a city which largely respects the natural landscape of a pre-developed area and its natural hydrology, and plans its spatial development in a manner that enhances its original state. This poses a direct credibility in land use and regional planning domain; yet when we look at the practices or indicators, they are largely focusing on small scale interventions. Consequently, it is crucial to look at the current status of project implementations happening all around the world: Which theme is it catering to the most? What is the scale of implementation? How is it catering to the climatic and social context of the place? These are some relevant enquiries to know its status right from the birth of these concepts, to today.
The three thematic programs, Program A -Society, Program B -Water Sensitive Urbanism, and Program C -Future Technologies, have been considered within a base framework to assess different case studies of water sensitive practices. A sample of 120 global case studies (Appendix A) catering to different water sensitive approaches was reviewed. These cases were marked on a Likert scale (0 or 1) under each of the three thematic programs and their respective sub-themes. This type of marking enables quantifying the inclination of various case studies towards the thematic areas of water sensitive practices. The locations of these respective cases were further mapped spatially with respect to their agro-climatic zones and water stress zones, giving a broader idea of water availability in various regions. These cases have been evaluated in terms of its scale of implementation and impacts at city level.

Results
After mapping the case studies spatially and with the matrix of thematic programs (Figure 4), analysis emerged on various fronts. The analysis was done for: i) sub-thematic zones which they were catered to the most, ii) the predominant scale of implementation iii) scale of implementation with respect to predominant thematic programs iv) spatial locations of the cases with respect to agro-ecological zones and water stress zones.

Figure 1
Graph showing sub-themes the most catered to by projects Figure 1 was fetched from the mapping of case studies in the matrix against themes and sub-themes (Appendix A). Out of the sample of 120 global cases, it was observed that the Program B focusing on water sensitive urbanism has been catered the most. This infers that most of the projects focus on implementation of water sensitive design practices. Relatively, there has been less focus on Program A, and from the projects catering to it the focus has mainly been generating a sense of belonging within people through participatory project implementation or generation of public spaces for people. Within Program C, the focus is mainly on providing water based on end user and creating multi-functional water sources. However, there is limited focus on monitoring system, wastewater re-use, and integration of centralized and decentralized water systems. Overall, it is evident that the limelight has mostly been on stormwater management, and the potential of wastewater management hasn't been tapped enough.   The evidence shows that most of the projects have been implemented at small scale at either site or neighborhood or area level ( Figure 2). The site scale has been the predominant scale of projects, constituting 30% of the cases. This has been followed by the neighborhood and area level projects which together comprise of 64% of the cases, and hence, could be generally referred to as the small scale projects. Furthermore, about 25% of the cases fall in the category of city scale projects, while the remaining 11% of the cases were found to be implemented at the regional scale. A correlation of each of the project scales with thematic programs was done (Figure 3). In the small-scale project covered in site scale, neighborhood scale, and area scale, the predominant theme is Program B, characterized by design projects for stormwater management. Followed by this is Program A, mainly including practices of participation of various stakeholders and creation of spaces for people to have a sense of belonging in the community. In the city scale, we see that most of the projects fall under Program A and C which focus on participation of various stakeholder, governance initiatives, provision of fit-for-purpose water, and wastewater management. In terms of catering to environmental sustainability and innovative design practices, only a few projects have taken some initiatives. At regional level, there are limited projects that would predominantly fall under the Program B essentially through the provision of blue-green infrastructure initiatives.  Figure 4 Location of 120 case studies with regards to different water stress zones (a) and Agro-Ecological Zones (B) of the world.
Furthermore, on mapping these case studies spatially, it can be said that a majority of these projects are clustered in Australia, North America, and UK in Europe ( Figure 4). Overall, all of the projects fall under agro-ecological zones of Tropics warm, Subtropical warm/moderate cool, and Temperate cool (Figure 4b) which are mostly the high water stressed regions (Figure 4a).

Discussions and Conclusion
The evidence of 120 global case studies shows that the primary focus of projects has mostly been implementing small-scale water sensitive design practices. Therefore, this study reflects on the fact that the conceptual literature paints a scenario of a city which largely respects the natural landscape, posing a direct credibility on land use and regional planning domain. However, the practices or indicators are largely limited to the small-scale interventions only. In such cases, the question of scalability and citywide impact remains unaddressed. Are we really moving towards water sensitive "cities" (cities being the operative word here) without any pan city interventions?
It is also crucial to understand the real intention of these practices. The theories essentially try to propagate the idea of planning as a way of life, which is difficult to achieve through the site specific or neighborhood level interventions. Water sensitive planning theories provide an opportunistic platform to combat climate change. However, it is not possible unless we really make use of literature on urban metabolism and integrate it with urban and regional planning tools. The theories essentially discuss how replacement of natural landscapes has posed immense pressure on water infrastructure and yet, there were very site-specific evidences that have promoted permeable surfaces.
There is also limited focus on other important concepts of water sensitivity such as integration of centralized and decentralized water systems. Aspects of wastewater management and re-use of treated wastewater were given less emphasis in comparison to the stormwater management, thus, losing out on a crucial type of water resource.
Furthermore, interesting inferences can be drawn from the spatial location of the evidence case studies with regards to the genesis of concepts related to water sensitivity (Figure 4). It can be inferred that the clustered locations of most of these cases in Australia, North America, and UK are essentially due to the emergence of notions of WSUD, LID, and SUDS in these regions respectively. These concepts are also found to be implemented in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe based on the suitability of agro-ecological regions and local conditions. Spatially, all of the global cases reviewed fall under high water stressed zones or arid regions. This conveys that certain regions have adopted these practices as the most pressing solutions for sustenance. On the other hand, it is also essential to understand that other regions of the world were empowered in advance, to adopt the water sensitive practices.  10 Practices in the global north are predominantly design-based stormwater management (Program B). This is because these countries have already arrived at the stage of drained city, and therefore, their primary focus now is environment conservation. At the same time in global south, initiatives are inclined towards the technology-based service provision (Program C) to improve access, as these countries are still not at par as a water supply city. Consequently, the current focus remains towards providing basic services while learning from the global north by adopting sustainable approaches.
Lastly, since the evidence shows that there is not a single water sensitive city on earth today, the question that needs to be discussed further is about the whole notion of water sensitive cities in general, which is rather utopic in nature. How can we tweak these concepts so as to encourage bigger impacts? At what stage of accomplishment does a city really become water sensitive? Perhaps, more empirical studies are required for different regions to appropriately assess the gaps in implementing water sensitive practices at pan-city levels. Thus, this study poses a way forward for such deeper empirical assessments to precisely identify the gaps and suggest contextual learnings for different regions of the world.