Rescaling water management and governance under new city-regionalism

Abstract

In 2006, seventeen municipalities in the Calgary region of Canada embarked on a major initiative to develop a long-range, coordinated approach to land use planning and water-sharing under a new regional governance framework that was primarily driven by sustainability. The water-sharing component would see water from the central city being provided to surrounding water-stressed municipalities under an integrated water resource management plan. Called the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP), this initiative is a highly complex and dynamic rescaling process involving multiple municipalities and water planning organizations. Water governance is couched within a broader ecological and economic city-region governance framework. While the academic literature speaks of city-regions as being privileged sites for new forms of governance, it also warns of significant challenges in their development and implementation. In this early stage in a planned research program, this paper will provide a literature review of three layers of rescaling pertinent to the case study: rescaling city-regions, rescaling ecological management, and rescaling water management. In situating the CRP within this literature, the paper underscores that partnership processes can be as daunting as they are ambitious and can cast doubts on the potential of implementing regional solutions to water management issues. © 2012 WIT Press.