Innovative approaches to urban water management in developing countries

Abstract

The expansion of our towns and our limited land resources have led to the need for multifunctional land use in densely populated cities like Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Adelaide, Australia. Recently in Kuala Lumpur, Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS) have been being adopted as a component of integrated urban water management. However, even SuDS technologies still often require dedicating areas of land to a single land use such as water conservation, flood control or water quality treatment. This paper investigates how innovative approaches to urban water management can lead to multi-functional landuse where habitat connections, flood storage, water reuse and social amenity are all integrated in the same land corridors. This could potentially release flood fringe areas for development which in turn could provide the economic driver to achieve higher level outcomes such as enhancement of urban ecology. However, further research is needed to inform practice in this important area. © 2011 WIT Press.