ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews each of the technical trends that have emerged in urban water sustainability research and practice in recent decades. It assesses the usefulness of analysing technologies through different frameworks and the implications for decisions about urban infrastructure. The frameworks are sustainable development, ecological modernisation, socio-technical systems, and political ecology and radical ecology. Technologies and infrastructures mediate between people and the environment, and the form of technology reveals the state of relations between cities and nature. Politics, values and conceptual frameworks are always present in decisions about infrastructure in cities. If infrastructures are social and political as well as technical systems, then it is important to explore the full range of options and their consequences when deciding upon the future of water in cities. The chapter concludes with reflections on how better understanding society, politics and technology might help deliver sustainable cities that work for people, water and nature.
