Urban Water Governance as a Function of the ‘Urban Hydrosocial Transition’

Abstract

Urban governance is as much about infrastructure as it is about people and processes. In particular, the history of urban governance is closely intertwined with the history of urban water services. Historically, as urban areas became larger and more densely inhabited, the collective need for better water services (drinking water, sanitation and flood protection in particular) became overwhelming. Cities simply could not grow beyond a certain relatively modest size without the simultaneous articulation of an integrated water services infrastructure to replace the piecemeal local arrangements previously in place. This necessarily implied new and more complex governance arrangements, in this case the institutionalisation of water services management in functional departmental structures, linked to political decision-making, finance, quality assurance and related functions. Whilst other papers have presented case studies of the urban hydrosocial transition (UHT) in terms of the physical extension of water services (e.g. water supply, sanitation and surface water management), this chapter focuses specifically on urban governance of water. We argue that the progressive breakdown of Fordist neo-corporatism in water services has opened up the field to a proliferation of ‘glocal’ (to use Swyngedouw’s useful neologism) governance arrangements. Whilst integrated water resource management (IWRM) principles imply a supra-urban scale of governance, the fact that urbanisation brings with it local concentration of water-related impacts means that there is an ineluctable local and urban dimension to water governance. It is therefore not surprising that cities around the world are asserting themselves as central players in water governance. Brief case studies from around the world are presented by way of illustration.